Democracy More or Less

“Are you for or against democracy?” Well, it depends. At the same time as an apparent shift in global politics towards democratic forms of governance (the Arab Spring is only one example), the economic forces of globalization are redefining democracy and widening the gap between those in power and those subordinate in power. Theologian Jeffrey Robbins has noted that “democracy always demands more democracy.”[i] But for an increasing number of western intellectuals today democracy is an annoyance. Fareed Zakaria the editor of Newsweek International and editor-at-large for Time Magazine has written, “What we need in politics today is not more democracy but less.”[ii]

The practice of radical democracy has always been central to anarchist practice and theory. David Graeber has said that anarchism as a whole and movements against globalization are “about reinventing democracy.”[iii] Anarchistic democracy is radical because it is a set of emancipatory practices and actions rather than a constitutional form or an institutional structure. Anarchism as a theory of radical democracy is an open-ended project.  Australian anarchist Saul Newman argues, “anarchism can be seen as providing the ultimate politico-ethical horizon for radical democracy.”[iv] What posture should Christian anarchists take in relationship to the democratic governments that most of us are a part of?

Democracy ain’t what it used to be – and maybe it never was. Political and economic influence is channeled into fewer and fewer hands while “democracy” and “freedom” spread everywhere. Everything is being redefined by economics. Even the state is now organized, regulated, and legitimized by how well it serves the financial markets. We live in “corporate democracies” where P.R. techniques provide the illusion of participation yet keep people in a state of apathy.

Sheldon Wolin defined radical democracy as a “rebellious moment”, unstable, and inclined toward anarchy. According to Wolin democracy is a revolutionary activity by common people against the injustice of the established regime. He concluded his classic survey of the history of Western political philosophy by asserting that “The central challenge at this moment is not about reconciliation but about dissonance, not about democracy’s supplying legitimacy to totality but about nurturing a discordant democracy.”[v]

French philosopher Jacques Ranciere agrees when he distinguishes between “policing” and “politics”. Policing is the set of policies and procedures that establish, organize, and legitimate power. Policing refers to the hierarchical political structures we inherit and the rationale used to justify their imposition. We do not need “the police” to do all the policing because we internalize the structures and thus police ourselves. Most of what we call politics (like elections and voting) is actually policing.[vi]

“Politics” according to Ranciere is antagonistic to policing and to the hierarchical structures that policing enforces. Politics implements difference, contingency, and equality into the system. Politics is “the equality of any speaking being with any other speaking being.”[vii] The lowest is no lower the highest. The highest is no higher than the lowest. Politics rarely happens because policing discourages it. According to Ranciere the purpose of politics is not consensus but dissensus. Politics is the refusal of the given policed order and the continual quest for the equality and liberty that must disrupt the false identities and social roles that are imposed upon us. Wolin and Ranciere therefore define the politics of radical democracy as a discordant democracy creating dissensus.

One of the most common objections I hear against anarchism is that it is reactionary and parasitic; and that anarchists have no positive program. We consistently hear this complaint against the Occupy Movement. I disagree. Anarchism is a proactive and generative understanding of society and politics.

Gustav Landauer was one primary example of a constructive anarchist (and a mystical one at that!). Landauer reframed the classic anarchist question about the necessity of abolishing the state. Landauer wrote “The State is a condition, a certain relationship between human beings, a mode of human behavior; we destroy it by contracting other relationships, by behaving differently.”[viii] The State only seems to be necessary because we presume it. In fact, the State is artificial and can be overcome by forming real relationships with “People”. The question of state or no-state is a false choice. “If the State is a relationship which can only be destroyed by entering into another relationship, then we shall always be helping destroy it to the extent that we do in fact enter into another.” Landauer advised the formation of alternative communities of real relationships that would not destroy the prevailing system by a frontal assault, but by withdrawing energy from it would render its institutions redundant. Landauer’s position didn’t require that everyone become an anarchist, nor did it force anyone to do so. It only forced those who desired to live differently to begin doing so immediately – to practice radical democracy.

We might consider the Mennonite John Howard Yoder as another constructive anarchist.[ix] Political philosopher Romand Coles write, “I read Yoder’s radical reformation theology as radically democratic—in the temporal as well as the directly ethical-political sense of the term.” [x]  Yoder’s Body Politics[xi] can be read as both a tract about the life of the gathered Christian community and also a forecast of what a radically democratic society might look like.

Yoder rejected the false dualism between state politics or no politics: “The choice or the tension which the Bible is concerned with is not between politics and something else which is not politics, but between right politics and wrong politics . . . Our first need has been to deny a dualism, to reject the splitting apart of territories separating the political from the nonpolitical.”[xii]

Yoder’s commitment to nonviolence has implications for how political discourse is practiced. The command of Jesus to love our enemies implies that loving our enemies means listening to our enemies. Coles observes that Yoder’s “pacifist epistemology” requires the practice of radical democracy. Patience is a necessary method for Yoder’s politics because only patience can guarantee everyone gets taken seriously. Radical democracy refuses to limit discussion to those “in power” or allow the majority to stifle the voice of the minority.

Yoder’s radical democracy is expressed primarily in the “social process” of the local Christian community. Yoder describes the “open process” by which the congregation welcomes full participation and due process so that every voice is heard and every witness evaluated. Yoder’s radical democratic process requires a congregation to be receptive, vulnerable, and always prepared for an interruption that reconfigures everything.

The church functions “prefiguratively” as the embodiment of the future that it hopes will some day be a reality for everyone. David Graeber described the prefigurative politics of those at the 1999 Seattle WTO protest: “When protesters in Seattle chanted ‘this is what democracy looks like,’ they meant to be taken literally. In the best tradition of direct action, they not only confronted a certain form of power, exposing its mechanisms and attempting literally to stop it in its tracks: they did it in a way which demonstrated why the kind of social relations on which it is based were unnecessary.”[xiii]

The resonance here between Yoder’s prefigurative Christian assembly and the prefigurative General Assemblies at the Occupy Movement is not coincidental. David Graeber’s insistence that the anti-globalization movement is about reinventing democracy might also be said of Yoder’s radical reformation vision for the church. This is not of course the first time that some version of Anabaptist practice has reinvigorated the practices of democracy. Anarchists have emphasized the importance of immediate direct action: the concrete prefigurative practice of a radical democracy in whatever social circle, order, organization, institution, or collective of which one is already a part. The practice of radical democracy flows out of radical Christian discipleship.

[i] Jeffrey W Robbins, Radical Democracy and Political Theology (Columbia University Press, 2011), p 32

[ii] Fareed Zakaria, The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad (W W Norton, 2003), p 242

[iv] Saul Newman, “Post Anarchism and Radical Politics Today”, Post-Anarchism Reader, edited by Duane Rousselle and Sureyya Evren (Pluto Press, 2011), p 65

[v] Sheldon Wolin, Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought (Princeton University Press, 2006), pp 605-606

[vi] Saul Newman, pp 58ff

[vii] Todd May, The Political Thought of Jacques Ranciere: Creating Equality (Penn State: 2008), pp 29-30

[viii] Buber, Martin. Paths in Utopia (Syracuse University Press, 1996), p 47

[ix] Yoder would have denied being an anarchist, but this essay would argue that his position is in fact compatible with anarchism – whether he recognized it or not.

[x] Romand Coles “The Wild Patience of John Howard Yoder: ‘Outsiders’ and the ‘Otherness’ of the Church” in The New Yoder, edited by Peter Dula and Chris K Huebner (Eugene, Oregon: Cascade: 2010)
[xi] John Howard Yoder, Body Politics: Five Practices of the Christian Community Before the Watching World (Scottsdale, PA: Herald Press, 2001), esp. chapter 5 “The Rule of Paul, pp 61-70.
[xii] John Howard Yoder. For the Nations: Essays Public and Evangelical (Eerdmans, 1997), pp 222-223
[xiii] David Graeber, Fragments of Anarchist Anthropology (Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2004), p 84 

What hath Zuccotti Park to do with Jerusalem?

The uprising of protest movements that began on September 17, 2011 in this country (partly inspired by the Arab Spring, partly instigated by Adbusters) has found a life of its own. This May’s G8-NATO summit in Chicago will become another prominent site of resistance. Chicago’s Mayor Rahm Emmanuel has passed new city laws deploying unlimited surveillance, restrictions on public activities and parades, and has authorized the hiring of contract law enforcement for the Summit—and beyond. On February 7, 2012, the U S Congress approved the use of drones in domestic airspace. If more drones were already available one can be certain Mayor Emmanuel would be using them as well. Will it be a Chicago Spring or only the late, brutal arrival of a long Chicago winter?

Many Christians of course are suspicious of and opposed to the Occupy Movement. They suspect its motives, its financial backers, and its subversive agenda. They are uneasy about protests against economic inequality, which seem to take some of Jesus’ words too literally. They are frustrated that all of this activist energy is not being directed into the current political system (where it can be controlled, redirected, manipulated, and eventually pacified).  Some Christians feel that the Occupy Movement is just another distraction from our obligation to preach the gospel and grow the church. Other Christians might legitimately ask, “What gospel?” and “Which church?”

For many other Christians participating in the Occupy assemblies and protests has been an exhilarating process. I know clergy who seem to have undergone another conversion experience. Occupy gatherings remind them of what the early churches must have been like: spontaneous, energized, pulsing with hope and expectation—provoking increasing conflict with the powers.

I’ll confess my own excitement about both the Arab Spring and the Occupy Movement. I don’t expect that long term the Occupy Movement will lead to a new world order that is less oppressive, more just, or more democratic. In my cynicism I don’t expect that Occupy will change much of anything. I live in the tension of suspecting that my actions are finite and yet absolutely essential. My hopes are utopian but not my expectations. But I do believe that as long as we can still dissent, organize, and protest, we can continue to unsettle and crack the hardening carapace of globalization that threatens to cover and consume this still beautiful planet. Every time I dissent from the reigning order I proclaim Jesus’ death until He comes.

Augustine wrote that the joys of empire are as fragile as glass. This is a metaphor of anxiety for those seduced by empire’s illusions and hope for those crushed by empire’s heel. That the Occupy Movement will not introduce the commonwealth of God announced by Jesus does not stifle my enthusiasm. In a totalitarian corporate capitalist order we must seek to create fissures and occupy spaces that can then be widened into “temporary theonomous zones” where true human life can be renewed and flourish once again. In this way the parallels between the Occupy Movement and the early churches are worthy of comparison.

On the day of Pentecost as narrated in Acts 2 we see the Holy Spirit initiating a secession movement from within the Roman Empire. Weekly gatherings began to develop and these gatherings spread rapidly across the entire empire. When they needed a word to describe these gatherings they did not draw upon religious parallels but adopted the political language of ancient Athenian democracy. They called their gatherings “assemblies”—ecclesia in Greek.

Their general assemblies initially had standard practices that developed a common life together. There seems to have been only a minimal plan or program to their activities. They tried to embody their ongoing reflection upon the life and death of Jesus. They practiced corporate discernment and decision-making and radical economic sharing that nurtured unity and minimized differences between rich and poor. These assemblies were clearly “political” entities; and yet unlike other political entities they were not formed by any decision, covenant, or social contract. They were birthed by the Spirit.

They did not appeal to the Roman Empire for recognition or reform. They were not concerned with making the Empire work better or with installing an alternative “Christian empire” [sic] in its place. A loyal Roman citizen declared “Caesar is Lord”; but every member of these alternative assemblies declared that “Jesus is Lord”. Rather than live as good imperial citizens these early followers of Jesus lived as much as possible as if the Empire did not exist!

When they gathered to hear “the apostle’s teaching” they were rehearsing and expanding an alternative political narrative; a narrative not determined by pollsters, media moguls, or commercial advertisers. When they met for meals and worship they sought to disregard social stereotypes, class and gender distinctions, economic disparities, and ethnic divisions. Sometimes they succeeded.

The New Testament accounts of these assemblies are undeniably romanticized in many places, although brutally honest in others. A developing “canon” of writings became a means of regulating some communal excesses and providing a degree of uniformity and unity to their expanding movement. Nevertheless, for an intentionally political entity they remained remarkably nonpolitical. What were their demands? Who were their leaders?

Theologian Dwight Hopkins has argued that globalization (what I call “military neoliberalism”) functions as a religion.1 The accumulation of the world’s resources under the control of a privileged elite embodies a deity (Mammon), a telos (wealth), a priestly class (global financiers), and religious institutions (the World Bank, the WTO, the IMF, and multinational corporations). Globalization has a theological anthropology that defines humanity as capital resources and consumers. Neo-liberalism is an economic “doctrine”, a colonizing theology, and a missionary religion.

When seen in this way there is an inevitable and necessary conflict between the politics of Pentecost and the religion of Empire. Pentecost provides an alternative view of globalization to that of Empire. Jesus proclaimed that another world was possible. This belief in an alternative future animated by the resurrection life of Jesus mobilized the early churches.

To the degree that the Occupy Movement continues to open up public space for alternative communities to form and develop I will continue to support it. Sometimes we cannot immediately do the things that we would eventually hope to do. Sometimes we must focus on doing those things that prepare the way. “What hath Zucotti Park to do with Jerusalem?” It makes other things possible.

Perhaps Christians suspicious of the Occupy Movement can legitimately argue that the politics of Pentecost do not coincide with the Occupy movement at all points. But they can only argue that if they themselves are adherents of the New Testament’s pentecostal politics and not merely capitalist collaborators seeking to serve God AND Mammon. Christians enthusiastic about the Occupy Movement must keep reminding ourselves of how and why we can continue to ally with its trajectory. Christians must oppose globalization’s assault upon the poor and the planet. Christians must defend the integrity of our own Christian faith when we see it being muted, mutated, and mutilated by the church’s alliance with Mammon and Molech.

The Occupy Movement threatens to develop some of its own divisions as debates about direction, method, and leadership begin to emerge. It is easy for me to imagine that by this time next year (2013 – after the next Presidential election) the Occupy Movement might be a dissipated ghost. But that is a feeling more rooted in my own cynicism than in any realistic assessment of political possibility. In times such as ours I suspect “possibility” is always a subjective projection rather than an objective evaluation. Who can read the signs of the times? As the church learned on the day of Pentecost (and keeps learning again and again) our God keeps surprising us. Even the gates of hell will not prevail – nor perhaps the forces of globalization.

---

1 Dwight N Hopkins. “The Religion of Globalization” in Religions/Globalizations: Theories and Cases, edited by Hopkins, Lorentzen, Mendieta, and Batstone (Duke, 2001), pp 7-32.

To Think Again of Dangerous and Noble Things

I was in southern Illinois visiting family over Thanksgiving and came upon a huge flock of starlings flying through the November sky.  It reminded me of this wonderful poem by Mary Oliver that I want to begin with tonight. The poem is titled “Starlings in Winter” (1):


Chunky and noisy,
but with stars in their black feathers,
they spring from the telephone wire
and instantly

they are acrobats
in the freezing wind.
And now, in the theater of air,
they swing over buildings,

dipping and rising;
they float like one stippled star
that opens,
becomes for a moment fragmented,

then closes again;
and you watch
and you try
but you simply can't imagine

how they do it
with no articulated instruction, no pause,
only the silent confirmation
that they are this notable thing,
this wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin
over and over again,
full of gorgeous life.
Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,

even in the leafless winter,
even in the ashy city.
I am thinking now
of grief, and of getting past it;

I feel my boots
trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart
pumping hard, I want

to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.  


I don’t believe in creation care. (2)    This may disqualify me from being a speaker in this series.  Another disqualification is that I am not an expert in any of the disciplines related to the natural world, the environment, or ecology. I am not a scientist.  Perhaps the only qualification I do have is my concern and the only authority I possess is my passion and conviction.  On the other hand, as the prophet Bob Dylan has said “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”  So here we go . . .


I don’t believe in creation care.  Creation care is too little too late.  We are past the time when any of the changes that creation care advocates recommend will make any significant difference in our environmental situation.  Recycling, changing light bulbs, riding bicycles, or starting a garden will not be sufficient to address the magnitude of the challenge before us.


I suspect creation care is a moralistic cover for our ongoing complicity in an evil system that is wreaking havoc on this planet.  Supporters of creation care are like the people living in the free states in the North before the Civil War.  They despised slavery and made eloquent, self-righteous speeches about how cruel and evil it was to enslave another human being.  However, they continued to enjoy the cotton, the sugar, and the tobacco that was grown on southern farms and harvested by slave labor.  They were embedded in an economic system that required slavery for its continuation and they supported a political compromise that allowed them to publicly despise the evils of slavery while continuing to benefit from its continuation.  As Ralph Waldo Emerson said “the sugar tasted good and they did not detect the blood in it.”


I don’t believe in creation care.  Creation care doesn’t recognize the depth of the mess we’re in.  We are, as psychologist Bill Plotkin has asserted, an adolescent society that has not yet come to grips with what being a mature human being in this world requires. (3) We use more energy to live our lives each day than any society in human history.  We sustain an extractive economy that utilizes nonrenewable resources which have taken thousands of years to develop and then expends them in a matter of decades.


Governments and corporations are working together now to do whatever it takes to keep this economic system going.  We will drill deeper wells, cut down more trees, fight more wars, and cause more and more environmental chaos. And for what?  For economic growth and having more?


Bill McKibben has noted three fundamental challenges to our fixation on growth:  first, we are  producing more inequality than prosperity, more insecurity than progress;  second, we do not have the  energy needed to keep producing more at our current rate;  and third, more growth and having more isn’t even making us happy. (4)


But we don’t have to monitor the ozone layer, measure melting glaciers, or count species depletion to know the destruction all of this is causing.  We carry the environmental crisis in our bodies.  We carry it in our bones.  We talk about “environmental illness” as if the environment is killing us; but the environment is not our enemy.  We are killing ourselves.  The problem is not "out there". (5)


I don’t believe in creation care because the creation doesn’t need our care.  The planet will survive even if the human species becomes extinct.  The natural environment is astonishingly robust and resilient.  We are horrified by the strip mined mountains in West Virginia, the land fills in Calumet, or the polluted beaches in Louisiana.  We should be angry and we should work on as many fronts as possible to limit and eventually end these violations of the earth. Yes, these things are horrors and we human beings are responsible for them.  But nature will eventually flourish again. We get fooled because the natural world works differently than we do.  The time of the earth is not human time. Nature is not interested in speed.  Because nature is slow we think nature is dumb.


The poet Mary Oliver observes the beauty of a flock of starlings in flight, moving as one creature, mysteriously communicating with one another,  moving like a “wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin, over and over again, full of gorgeous life.”  She tells us she is confronting her own grief but she does not tell us the reasons for her grief.  She does not need to.  We each carry our own grief and Oliver respects our grief by not naming hers.  But this is not a poem about grief, but rather a poem about overcoming grief, or as Oliver says, “of getting past it.”  The starlings inspire her so much that despite her grief she feels as if her feet will leave the ground and she will join them in flight.  The starlings “improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing” inspire her to “think again of dangerous and noble things.”


The Bible tells us that God does not ignore the environmental destruction of our civilization.  If need be God will enforce the Sabbath rest that God intended from the time of creation. Listen to
Leviticus 26:34-35:


“Then the land shall enjoy its Sabbath years as long as it lies desolate, or you are in the land of your enemies; then the land shall rest, and enjoy its Sabbath years. As long as it lies desolate, it shall have the rest it did not have on your Sabbath when you were living on it.”


These verses are about Sabbath.  They explain one reason why Israel is in exile.  They are in exile because they did not give the land the rest it needed.  God sends them away. The land “shall have the rest it did not have . . .when you were living on it.”  God enforces Sabbath.


The environmental destruction being waged upon this planet is the result of our neglect of Sabbath.  Hebrew religion took Sabbath so seriously they believed God had woven the Sabbath principle into the very grain of the universe.  The pinnacle of the seven-day creation story was not the creation of woman and man, but Sabbath - the seventh day.  If the people honor the Sabbath and "keep it holy" they and their children will be blessed.  If the people will not honor the Sabbath then God will intervene and the land will lie desolate until it finds its rest.  “It shall have the rest it did not have.”


Globalization has peaked and is already coming to an end.  It is literally running out of fuel.  Globalization is a finite process; despite its surface health and the appearance of being a powerful force overcoming all cultural and natural obstacles.  Globalization is already coming to an end.   The world will either willingly enter into a post-carbon age or we will be forced to do so.  The earth “shall have the rest it did not have.”


But clearly globalization still has a lot of fuel left in the tank.  The fact that it is a finite process fueled by finite physical and spiritual resources (yes, the demonic principalities and powers are also finite!) does not mean that globalization is not a force to be taken seriously, to be struggled against and resisted with every spiritual weapon at our disposal.  Sabbath is one of those weapons.


Globalization is a set of practices contrary to everything that Sabbath demands.  We cannot serve globalization and Sabbath.  Sabbath is a revolutionary practice contrary to everything that the global economy demands.  The work of Sabbath is perhaps the primary form of communal resistance for Christians in the years ahead.  But our practice of Sabbath must be broader and more systemic than just taking a regular day off. (6)


I find the principles of creation care being presented by many concerned and responsible Christian people to not go far enough.  They do not grasp the seriousness of our situation.  They do not address the comprehensive changes that are needed in the material aspects of our lives.  They do not reflect the revolutionary potential of Sabbath.


The work of Sabbath will confront the globalization head-on in terms of our energy use.  One place I am looking to with hope and encouragement is in the Transition Town movement.  Transition Towns is an international grassroots network of communities working towards a post-carbon society.  The aim of this movement is to equip local communities for the dual challenges of climate change and peak oil.  (7)


The key word for the Transition Town movement is not “creation care” but “energy descent” and the key practice is not “sustainability” but “resilience”.  The human use of nonrenewable energy that began its ascent at the time of the Industrial Revolution must not begin to descend.  "Energy descent" refers to the continual decline in net energy it takes to support human society.  This descent will be a long, bumpy, and perilous journey.


In working toward energy descent the crucial capacity that we need to develop is “resilience”.  Resilience is the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change.  Resilience is the capacity of a local community to not break down as the environment around it becomes unstable.  Resilience is needed when the way communities have been doing things is forced to change.  Resilience is a way of avoiding despair or being paralyzed by the overwhelming challenges ahead.


I do believe there are reasons to be hopeful.  A world beyond globalization need not be a barren, apocalyptic nightmare.  Christians must once again do the work that Jesus called us to in announcing the kingdom of God.  By announcing that kingdom Jesus was challenging us to begin re-imagining the shape of our lives.  This is our calling today as well.


What does human life look like, what does Christian community life look like on the other side of peak oil and climate change?  Given the certainty that dramatic changes are ahead of us how can we begin to live differently right now?  Given the fact that the “land will find its rest”  how can we begin to live into this coming Sabbath with the deep conviction that this will not be a lesser life than we have lived; but in fact a better life, a fuller life, a more beautiful life, a more abundant life. 




I want to close where I began with another reading of Mary Oliver’s “Starlings in Winter”:

Chunky and noisy,
but with stars in their black feathers,
they spring from the telephone wire
and instantly

they are acrobats
in the freezing wind.
And now, in the theater of air,
they swing over buildings,

dipping and rising;
they float like one stippled star
that opens,
becomes for a moment fragmented,

then closes again;
and you watch
and you try
but you simply can't imagine

how they do it
with no articulated instruction, no pause,
only the silent confirmation
that they are this notable thing,
this wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin
over and over again,
full of gorgeous life.
Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,

even in the leafless winter,
even in the ashy city.
I am thinking now
of grief, and of getting past it;

I feel my boots
trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart
pumping hard, I want

to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.




And all God’s people said:  AMEN.

[This homily was part of an Advent worship service at Reba Place Fellowship, Evanston, Illinois, Tuesday, December 13, 2011]

 (1) "Starlings in Winter" by Mary Oliver, from Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays. © Beacon Press, 2003.

 (2) Although I am not specifically targeting the Evangelical Environmental Network’s emphasis on “creation care” they do represent a good example of the inadequate response I am talking about.

 (3) Plotkin actually calls it a “patho-adolescent society”.  See Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World, by Bill Plotkin (New World Library, 2007).

 (4) Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future, by Bill McKibben (St Martin’s Griffin, 2008)

 (5) Inescapable Ecologies: A History of Environment, Disease, and Knowledge, by Linda Nash (University of California Press, 2007)
 (6)  A biblical and theological foundation for this work can be found in The Biblical Vision of Sabbath Economics, by Ched Myers (Church of the Savior, 2002); and The Biblical Jubilee and the Struggle for Life, by Ross and Gloria Kinsler (Orbis Books, 1999).
 (7) Theologian Timothy Gorringe’s 2011 lecture at the Trinity Institute is an insightful theological analysis of the Transition Towns movement 

 

My Thoughts Are Murder to the State

On July 4, 1845 Thoreau moved to Walden Pond and remained there for the next two years.  The year before he had returned to his family home in Concord, Massachusetts to work in the Thoreau pencil factory.  He dreamed of buying or leasing a farm where he could support himself and pursue his writing.  In the spring of 1845 his friend Ellery Channing had told Thoreau that he should immediately build a hut for himself somewhere.  So he did.

The book that famously resulted from Thoreau’s sojourn in the woods is often interpreted as the eccentric work of an isolated hermit and social misfit. It is true that Thoreau’s solitary life and writing did occupy much of his time.  In 1846 he would complete and publish his first book A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers which described an 1839 hiking trip with his brother Charles.  But during Thoreau’s two years at Walden Pond he was also immersed in the abolition movement.  By day Thoreau sheltered runaway slaves in his small cabin and at night saw them safely on their way further north.

Soon after his return to Concord the local collector came to garner six years of unpaid taxes.  Thoreau was not opposed to the payment of debts, however he looked upon the imposition of a poll tax by a government that supported both slavery and the Mexican-American war to be against his conscience.  He refused to pay.

Three weeks after his arrival at Walden Pond (and two weeks after his twenty-eighth birthday) Thoreau was arrested and put in the Concord jail.  The legend goes that his mentor and friend Ralph Waldo Emerson arrived to visit him and asked, “Henry, what are you doing in there?” to which Thoreau responded to Emerson, “What are you doing out there?”.

Even though Emerson was also opposed to slavery and to the War he was appalled by Thoreau’s actions. Emerson felt the situation did not demand the extremes of civil disobedience that Thoreau was advocating.  Emerson had much more trust in the political process and little sympathy for Thoreau’s anarchism.

However, Emerson was not adverse to the appeal of radical activism.  He did not flinch when the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison publicly burned a copy of the U S Constitution declaring it to be a pro-slavery document.  Emerson welcomed prominent abolitionists to his home on a regular basis.  And only a few years later he would collect funds to buy rifles for John Brown.

The difference between Emerson and Thoreau at this point in time reflected their differing takes on the nature of the political crisis.  Emerson still had hope that slavery could be abolished through due process and without a civil war.  Thoreau thought, in agreement with the abolitionists, that the State was hopelessly compromised by its ongoing complicity with evil.

One year after Thoreau’s departure from Walden Pond, while he was immersed in revising Walden, he penned his famous lecture and essay on “Resistance to Civil Government”.  It was of course inspired by his time in jail, but also informed by an 1831 poem of Percy Byshe Shelley entitled “The Mask of Anarchy”   where Shelley wrote:

Stand ye calm and resolute,
Like a forest close and mute,
With folded arms and looks which are
Weapons of unvanquished war.

And if then the tyrants dare,
Let them ride among you there,
Slash, and stab, and maim and hew,
What they like, that let them do.

With folded arms and steady eyes,
And little fear, and less surprise
Look upon them as they slay
Till their rage has died away

Then they will return with shame
To the place from which they came,
And the blood thus shed will speak
In hot blushes on their cheek.

Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number,
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you-
Ye are many — they are few.

Thoreau wrote in Civil Disobedience that “if a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.” And then a few years later, in 1854 on the eve of publishing Walden. Thoreau wrote in his journal:  “My thoughts are murder to the state.”

I think of Thoreau during these days of resistance.  As in his day there is diversity among those of us united in our outrage at the injustice, existent evil, and imminent evil all around us.  Some of this diversity reflects differing readings of the Bible or differing forms of Christian spirituality that either encourage or discourage public engagement.  Some springs from differing dispositions on the efficacy of political activism. Even our small circle of Christians gathered around the concerns of “anarchism” often finds itself at odds about what implications the black flag entails for Christian discipleship.

The abolitionists of Thoreau’s day were one part of a larger reform movement that included activism on women’s suffrage, temperance, animal rights, “free love”, and communalism.  The period from 1830-1860 was a yeasty time in American history in which the rise of capitalism, increased immigrant labor, the expansion of western markets, and political gridlock sparked increasing social ferment, unrest and opposition.

As perhaps the most radical of these reform movements, the abolitionists disavowed any appeal to process, appeasement, or compromise.  In spite of the need to address many issues of injustice they remained focused on one.  Understanding the systemic evil of a national (not just regional) economy based upon slavery, they insisted upon attacking this evil at its core.  They asserted that slavery must be abolished. Period.  Fugitive slaves must be protected and assisted. Commercial products dependent upon slavery (cotton, tobacco, sugar) must be boycotted.  The spread of this virulent practice should be oppposed by any means necessary.

We of course know that the actions and reactions around this issue would eventually culminate in a horrible civil war that would cost the lives of hundreds of thousands and permanently change the direction of United States history.

Some would question whether the systemic injustices of our day equate with those of one hundred and fifty years ago.  Others would assert that our dilemma is if anything even more perilous and fraught with danger.

Whether we are committed to a Christian discipleship focused around the individual imitation of the historical Jesus, the missionary call of Matthew 28, the social activism of Luke 4, the communalism of Acts 2, or the apocalyptic hope of Revelation, I believe we must all seek to find the one place, the one issue, the one firm grip we can grasp upon our own responsibility and calling in this time.  We have always understood that our spiritual lives are caught up in a divine drama far beyond our own understanding or ability to articulate.  What we perhaps have yet to perceive is that our political and social lives are also engaged with a drama (perhaps just as divine) that extends beyond the horizon of any one point of view.

Radical times call for radical commitments.  Those commitments must be rooted not just in those times, but (as Thoreau would write) in the “eternities”.  And yet, those commitments must connect with our times in ways that are vital and efficacious. Our actions must have bite.  Finding the tender spots of the empire may not be as self-evident as it was in Thoreau’s day.  But often the reactions of the principalities and powers give some indication of when we are getting close.  Christian radicals should never be condemned as the toothless dogs of complacency and cynicism.  Eventually we have to show some teeth.

Also published on Jesus Radicals, December 5, 2011

What Did Bonhoeffer See?

In January, 1935 Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote to his brother Karl-Friedrick “The restoration of the church will surely come only from a new type of monasticism which has nothing in common with the old but a complete lack of compromise in a life lived in accordance with the Sermon on the Mount in the discipleship of Christ.  I think it is time to gather people together to do this...” (A Testament to Freedom: the Essential Writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, edited and transl by Geffrey B. Kelly and F. Burton Nelson (HarperCollins, 1995), page 42)

This letter was written less than a year after the Barmen Declaration and four months after Adolf Hitler had assumed complete dictatorial control of the German state.  It came four years before the beginning of the most devastating war in human history resulting in the deaths of 50-70 million people.

In light of that context Bonhoeffer’s proposal to begin forming a “new type of monasticism” seems like a counsel of despair, withdrawal, and perhaps even irresponsibility.  It has been argued that Bonhoeffer later repented of this project and joined the assassination plot against Hitler as a better alternative.  I do not want to argue that here.[i]  What I do want to investigate is what might have led someone as insightful, brave, and devout as Dietrich Bonhoeffer to turn towards the Sermon on the Mount and the practice of communal discipleship as the appropriate initiative for engaged Christians in a time of global crisis.  What did Bonhoeffer see in Jesus’ sermon for such a time as that?  What might we still see for such a time as ours?

Bonhoeffer saw in the Sermon on the Mount the resources for responding to the German crisis in at least three ways.  First, he saw that the Sermon contained the resources for resistance to National Socialism, German patriotism, and the war.  Resistance would be practiced not just in subversive anti-government actions, but also in the formation of a church that could not be seduced by the false promises of blood and soil.  Crucial to the practice of cultural resistance was the formation of a Christian people, a confessing church, trained in and practicing the Sermon on the Mount without compromise.

Second, Bonhoeffer saw that the Sermon and the founding of a “new type of monasticism” would lay the foundations for a new social order after the war was over.  It did not matter whether Germany won this war or not (and it was clear through Bonhoeffer’s efforts that he hoped for Germany’s defeat); what mattered was establishing centers for renewal where a new type of recovery could begin and a new type of society be established.  These were in reality communities of and for the future, not communities trying to preserve or recreate an idyllic past.

Finally, Bonhoeffer saw that the Sermon on the Mount was the key resource for the restoration and renewal of the church and the church’s capacity to recover her voice as God’s people.  The Barmen Declaration had unmasked the false religion of the established church for the idolatry that it was.  A renewed church where Christians were catechized in the Sermon on the Mount would not look like the mainline churches that had been so susceptible to the appeal of National Socialism.   It would be a church founded upon and shaped by Christ alone.

Utilizing Bonhoeffer’s example what might we see in our own time of global crisis?  I want to briefly suggest ten things that summarize the Sermon in language that is suggestive for our contemporary situation as radical disciples of Jesus.  These may not relate well to you at all, but they have related well to others with whom I have shared them; and they reflect my own continuing attempts to understand the revolutionary potential that the Sermon contains for “a life lived . .  . in the discipleship of Christ.”

1.    This life is for those who hunger for justice and peacemaking (Matthew 5:6,9)

Bonhoeffer certainly did not see the Sermon as an alternative to justice-seeking and conflict transformation.  Although addressed to disciples only, it was not for disciples only.  On the contrary, it was by means of a disciplined spiritual formation that a broader justice and peace would be furthered.

2.    This life is an oppositional, countercultural way of life (Matthew 5:10-11)

However, the way of peace is not a peaceful way.  Clearly, this community will not seek to always stay out of trouble, keep its beliefs to itself, living quietly in the land.  It is important that opposition come for the right reasons (“for the sake of justice”), but the absence of outer conflict is not a sign of inner faithfulness – and may in fact indicate just the opposite!

3.    This life leads us into public ministry and the social performance of the gospel (Matthew 5:14-16)

The Sermon on the Mount forms a public church.  This church does not reside in the public square, nor do public concerns control its agenda.  But it does not confine its witness to the byways or out-of-ways, but brings it’s message out to front street where everyone can see and evaluate it.

4.    This life is a creative, improvisatory style of life (Matthew 5:21-48)

Jesus contradicts the Mosaic law not to impose an alternative law, but to propose the practice of grace.  A life lived by the practice of grace is going to have an unpredictable, nonconforming aspect to it.  Many of the central concerns of human society (the rule of law, the sanctity of life, sexual relations, contracts, conflict) are reevaluated and transformed by the way of Christ.  It is not a blueprint, but a trajectory – a way, a practice, a discipline.

5.    This life draws upon a hidden religiosity, a deep spirit (Matthew 6:1-18)

Just at the time when the outer crises increase our confusion and fear we are called to go deeper, be quieter, and to seek out the hidden way of a spiritual discipline of sharing, fasting, and prayer.

6.    This life is sometimes iconoclastic and polarizing (Matthew 6:19-24)

Perhaps the icons of our day are no longer the statues and relics in our places of worship, but the “mammon” that seeks our ultimate allegiance in place of God.  The Sermon does not allow for a posture of toleration towards that which would redirect the way of Christ.

7.    This life requires boldness, courage, and radical trust (Matthew 6:25-34)

Fear is the enemy of faith and rather than selling fear we should be nurturing faith; doubting our doubts and entrusting ourselves to the God who can still surprise us with the specificity of God’s care.

8.    This life demands on-going transformation and growth (Matthew 7:1-6)

And then with enemies all around we are reminded that it’s not about them it’s about us.  We are the ones called to change.  We are the ones called to repentance.  We are the ones God keeps waiting for.

9.    This life is an adventurous but challenging way (Matthew 7:7-20)

It will not be boring! You will be called to do things in new ways, never certain of the means, yet never doubting your provision.  There will be dangers, mistakes, wrong turns, deceptions, and disappointments along the way.  But in the end your faithfulness will “bear fruit”.

10. This life is for the long haul and is sustainable and enduring (Matthew 7:24-27).  

This is the most important passage in the entire Sermon.  Jesus is not forming a people around a single issue or a common cause or a movement. This is “full catastrophe” living, which can survive any and all crises.  No one would embark upon such a journey without a promise like this.  We work not for ourselves or even for our children, but for our great grand children.  God’s dream is the work of generations.

Perhaps, the Sermon on the Mount and the formation of discipleship communities seeking to live out that Sermon without compromise is still the place for us to begin addressing all the crises that stimulate our addictions, capture our fears, and inflame our anxieties.  Perhaps it continues to be the time to “gather people together to do this.” 

Also published on Jesus Radicals, October 20, 2011

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[i]   In a forthcoming book Mennonite theologian Mark Thiessen Nation will argue that based upon a new evaluation of the historical records it seems clear Bonhoeffer was not executed for involvement in the assassination plot against Hitler as has been commonly believed.  If true, this will require a substantial rethinking of Bonhoeffer’s life and thought:   http://emu.edu/now/podcast/2011/02/23/dietrich-bonhoeffer-the-assassin-challenging-a-myth-recovering-costly-grace-mark-thiessen-nation/

Leave No Trace

For the past month the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA) in northeastern Minnesota has been on fire.  A lightning strike started the blaze on August 18th. The Forest Service was anticipating a small, controllable, environmentally beneficial burnoff that wouldn’t pose much threat to either BWCA campers or nearby residents.  On September 12th high winds, high temperatures, and low humidity renewed the fire and redirected it to the south and east.  It changed from a slow moving, limited fire to a rolling inferno racing sixteen miles in five hours, threatening homes and campers, and creating smoke that could be smelled 500 miles away.  The Park Service and the National Guard, with help from slower winds, autumn temperatures and rainfall, are presently helping to keep the fires under control.

There are a multitude of paradoxes in the relationship of human government and our wilderness areas.  Neither BWCA nor any of our other National Parks would exist without government intervention.  Without federal protection, lumber and mining industries and subsequent housing developers would have devastated BWCA decades ago.  On the other hand, people were displaced, livelihoods were lost, and the number of places on this continent where people might still have the option of living off the grid and immersed in the more-than-human world was further reduced.  With government permission and permits you and I can visit BWCA for short periods of time.  The clear water, the wildlife, and the silence can remind us of what our indigenous ancestors experienced on a daily basis.  We care for and preserve these places, but we are no longer allowed to live there.  We have protected areas of our country preserved like displays in a museum where we can look but not touch.  We have other (also protected) areas of our country where humanity can have our rapacious way.  It is an awkward and perverse contract.

Those who regularly visit the National Parks in this country are familiar with the admonition to “leave no trace.”  Those who come to vacation in the parks are encouraged to leave the wilderness as they found it – stay on the designated hiking trails (or get a backcountry permit) and “pack out what you pack in”.  The federally sponsored Leave No Trace program emerged in the 1990s as part of a developing minimal-impact wilderness ethic that tried to address the dramatic increase in tourism.  An emerging environmental consciousness, a rapidly developing wilderness recreation industry, and a spate of adventure publications (Outside magazine began in 1977) created a vigorous capitalistic synergy around all of this. Read magazines and books about outdoor tourism, make short visits to rugged and/or exotic places, and buy expensive gear that makes it possible and enjoyable.  

The underlying mechanisms are capitalistic.  Those who shop at REI and Patagonia are people who really care about the environment! Environmental historian Jay Turner writes, “Only in the convoluted logic of modern consumer culture did it make sense that those actions in the shopping mall were the best way to save the wilderness beyond.” [i]

When the vacation ends, we leave these “recreation” areas behind and return to the everyday practices of our extractive economy where “all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; and wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell” and where “leave no trace” rules no longer apply. [ii]  The National Park system’s “leave no trace” philosophy aids and abets the dominant market forces.  It exposes and reinforces the schizophrenia of our culture’s virgin/whore relationship to nature, where we have federally-protected shrines to limited areas and federally-protected abuse of all the rest. [iii]

There is some truth to conservationist Dan Daggett's accusation that the environmental movement has cooperated with the pretense of this practice by perpetuating a fundamental misunderstanding of the proper role of humans within our ecosystems.  Daggett argues that humans belong on this earth too.  We are not an alien presence. However, we have neglected our duties as hunters, herders, and gatherers. These human duties are just as important to a healthy ecosystem as the reintroduction of wolves! [iv]

Christian concepts of “stewardship” and “creation care” fail to address this basic cultural psychosis.  We are called to be members of bioregional ecosystems not managers.  Yet we have constructed an artificial world on top of the natural world.  This artificial world must be undone rather than being reformed.  A renewed world will begin with a renewed understanding of the rightful place of humans on this earth.  We are currently doing ourselves in by depleting the sources of our lives because we misunderstand who we are.  The more-than-human world that we have misnamed “wilderness” holds the key to our undoing.  It is our undoing that we must seek.

The question always arises that even if this indictment is true how do we begin to address it?  Where do we start?  Radicals critique mainstream efforts to alter the material conditions of our lives (conservation, recycling, etc) because these efforts do not go far enough.  However, changes in the material conditions and circumstances of our lives are necessary and even the smallest of changes are not without significance.

Anarchists critique mass political efforts to create more regulatory legislation and increase federal oversight, while neglecting the need for radical, revolutionary change.  However, massive political action is also necessary.  Coordinated actions around projects like the Keystone XL Pipeline are crucial, if for no other reason than that we must strengthen our resolve to keep saying no to the destructive trajectory of our time.  The corporate and international forces arrayed against us are too powerful to be opposed by only fragmented, decentralized (or disengaged) protests.  However, these actions will only provide temporary (though necessary) restraints.

We must go beyond lifestyle changes and political activism to addressing the depth dimensions of civilizational consciousness.  We must enact a new way to be human that grasps our immersion in a more-than-human world that can sustain our lives in healthy, vital, and abundant ways.  I believe that the anarcho-primitivist challenge to civilization, drawing upon deep ecology and the rewilding of biblical and theological studies, is a rough-around-the-edges, in-your-face confrontation with this need.  It is not a sufficient confrontation but it is a necessary one.  It is also not a position without contradictions, but there are no positions without contradictions.

As Calvin Luther Martin has argued in his work we must move to the deeper level of faithful imagining regarding the relationship between the human and more-than-human worlds:  “Many will respond with that oft heard reply, but we cannot go back to which I respond, but we never left--never left our true, real context, that is. ‘Homo’ is still here on this planet earth, abiding in our most fundamental and necessary nature by its fundamental and necessary terms. We left all of that only, really, in our fevered imagination.” [v]

We must commence individual and communal journeys, which involve the exploration of the "original wildness" [vi] within ourselves. We are trapped in contradiction because we have been colonized by that which oppresses us.  This is the key stronghold in our lives.  When like Jesus we spend extended periods of time in wilderness places (even federally protected places!) we can still hear the echoes of our primal, God-gifted self; but these voices are sporadic, distant, and fading.  Contemporary philosophers like David Abram and wilderness psychologists like Bill Plotkin are providing invaluable models for beginning to undo our domesticated consciousness.  Plotkins’s “soulcraft” work (recently recognized by Richard Rohr) is a powerful set of disciplines for counter-imperial disciples seeking to re-establish their proper place in this world. [vii]

Premodern indigenous cultures lived in harmony with their natural environment for centuries.  They were active participants in their local ecosystem enacting roles as crucial to its vitality as the ecosystem was crucial to their own survival.  But they did not abide there as stewards or managers.  They understood their role as members, fellow creatures, living actively but lightly on the land; immersed in a more-than-human world charged with the grandeur of God.  They intuitively understood the words of Job when he said “naked came I from my mother’s womb and naked I shall return.”  There is no reason we could not do that too.  Perhaps this is how God intended it.  Perhaps it is what we must do in order to survive.

This was also published on Jesus Radicals,  October 2, 2011

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[i] James Morton Turner, “From Woodcraft to ‘Leave No Trace’: Wilderness, Consumerism, and Environmentalism in Twentieth-Century America” Environmental History, Vol. 7, No. 3, 2002, pp 462–484.

[ii] Gerard Manley Hopkins, “The World is Charged With the Grandeur of God”

[iii] The misogynist overtones of this analogy are intentional as views of nature and masculine views of women are closely related.

[iv] Daniel Daggett, Gardeners of Eden: Rediscovering Our Importance To Nature (Thatcher, 2005)

[v] Calvin Luther Martin, In the Spirit of the Earth: Rethinking History and Time (John Hopkins University Press, 1993), p 167
[vi]  Bill Plotkin, Nature and the Human Soul (New World Library), pp 88-89 

[vii] Bill Plotkin, Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche  (New World Library, 2003)

Christian community at Reba Place

An address to the 

Graduate Christian Fellowship (InterVarsity)
Part of a series entitled "How should we then live?"

Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois

Friday, February 24, 2006

Introduction

I appreciate this opportunity to come and be with you.  I want to thank your leadership team for the invitation and I hope we can use our time well, bring glory to God, and blessing to each other.

I am the lead pastor of Reba Place Church here in Evanston, Illinois.  When Hannah extended this invitation to me she mentioned that Reba Place seemed to be a place where we were “very conscientious about living a Jesus-patterned life.”  I hope that is true and accurate.  It certainly is what we aspire to.

And for us a Jesus-patterned life must be a life lived in community with one another.  Remembering my own experience in graduate school, community was one of the deficits I felt most acutely.  And so I thought perhaps I could share some thoughts on Christian community as we have experienced it at Reba Place, and then in the discussion time we could talk about how this may or may not apply to your own experience here at Northwestern and elsewhere.

I want to begin by talking about Jesus and community and then describe a bit about the history of Reba Place.  Finally I want to suggest some principles that are based upon our own experience, but that might also have applicability in lots of other situations.

Jesus and community

When Jesus began his ministry the first thing he did was gather some people together and form a small community.  It was an itinerant group moving from place to place.  They lived off the financial support of a few individuals as well as the mercy of those villages and families they visited.  It was a community formed around the personality and purposes of Jesus.  In many ways we might identify it as an educational community.  They were a group of learners (also called disciples) gathered around a teacher (also called a rabbi) and they were being apprenticed into a body of knowledge, with an accompanying set of objectives, disciplines, and skills.

The body of knowledge (also called the gospel) that Jesus was teaching did not just lead to the formation of a community as a byproduct, or a spin-off of what was being taught.  Christian community was not an accident. The formation of an intentional community of Christian disciples was central to the gospel Jesus taught.  A gospel without a community is only a partial gospel, an incomplete gospel, a brain without a body (sometimes even an embalmed brain!). 

The centrality of community is implied in almost all of Jesus’ teaching.  The “kingdom of God/heaven” is a social concept.  You cannot have a kingdom with one person and God (although you can have a friendship!).  The concepts of love, of hospitality, even of forgiveness, are not functional concepts without the reality of a community in which they can be learned and experienced. 

Where the Christian life is viewed as an individual spiritual practice in which the belonging to and participating in community is only optional you have a truncated gospel, which (and I want to say this gently but firmly) is no gospel at all.

The gospel of the kingdom, Jesus’ magnificent obsession, is primarily embodied not in a text like the Bible but in a community.

The belief that an individual could not be significant outside the context of community was common in the ancient and medieval world. In Plato’s Apology, to take the most familiar example, Socrates faces the choice between banishment or execution.  He chooses death because a life outside the community is something worse than death.

In the New Testament, we read Matthew 18:20 “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” And John 13:35 “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”  Demonstrating both the intimacy with God in community and the witness of that intimacy to the watching world.

In 1441 the Pope declared that “there is no salvation outside the church” which on the face of it was merely asserting Rome’s claim to primacy over all other Christians. But underneath that bald assertion is a core of truth that all of us should come to embrace.  Every individual believer must be part of a visible Christian community in order to be faithful to the gospel of Christ.  Or, to say it again in a different way there is no faithfulness to the gospel outside of Christian community.

Now it would take me too far afield to discuss how the belief in a disembodied gospel (a church without community) became dominant, especially in North American Christianity.  But it is a fact that many if not most Christians no longer think of active participation in a Christian community as being a necessity for the authentic expression of their faith.

I just counseled with a woman yesterday who stopped attending any church more than two years ago, and yet tried to assure me that indeed she still “had church” by herself in her own home every Sunday morning!

Reba Place and community

Reba Place Church and Reba Place Fellowship are located in the southern part of Evanston, south of Main Street and just west of Chicago Avenue.  We are part of the Radical Reformation tradition and more specifically of the Mennonite Church USA.

In case you are not familiar with the Radical Reformation, they were Christians who supported the reforms proposed by Luther and Calvin but also felt they didn’t go far enough. They upheld a simple Bible-based faith and emphasized the importance of discipleship as an expression of one’s salvation in Christ.  For the most part they practiced nonviolence and advocated the separation of church and state.  As a result of this they were persecuted and harassed from country to country, and in some parts of Europe almost totally extinguished.

The descendants of this tradition, the Mennonites and the Church of the Brethren, began migrating to North America in the 1700s and developed farming communities in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, and Kansas.  Today Mennonites extend around the world with the largest number being found in Africa.

Reba Place began as a voluntary service project by a group of young Mennonites in the late 1950s.  They bought a house on Reba Place Street and inspired by the example of Acts 2, began to share all their possessions.  As more people joined and the community grew in numbers they moved into nearby apartments and eventually bought other houses and soon even entire apartment buildings. 

In the 1970s Reba Place experienced a charismatic revival that by 1990 had increased our numbers to almost 400.  Many lived in extended households where multiple families lived under one roof, participating in daily prayer and meals together, and sharing in the housekeeping and child rearing.  In many ways it was a form of lay monasticism.

Reba Place also invested in the local neighborhood and the Evanston community by creating Reba Day Nursery, Evanston’s first homeless shelter and soup kitchen, and a community development corporation.

In the late 1990s Reba Place entered a time of reorganization that led directly to the start of a new church in Rogers Park, and a fellowship of intentional Christian communities across North America.  The influence of Reba Place and other intentional Christian communities has not been extensive but it has been significant.  The so-called “new monasticism” movement that was featured on a recent cover of Christianity Today (September, 2005) is a contemporary expression of the same impulse toward a concrete, communal expression of the gospel. 

We believe the formation of these Christian communities represents a counter-witness to at least three of the central deities (or idols if you will) of contemporary Western civilization: Mars, Mammon, and Me.  Mars as the god of war is one of the increasingly prominent idols of our age.  Mammon, or money, which is the way we measure our value, worth, and security is another.  And Me, or individualism, which both celebrates the fruit of freedom while simultaneously undermining its root is a third.

These idols are powerfully influential in our world today, and they have to some degree even corrupted the church itself.  If we are to be obedient to Paul’s admonition in Romans 12 that we “be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds” then we must realize that we cannot accomplish that task as an isolated individual.  Not only should we seek community in order to be faithful to the gospel of Jesus, we need community for our own survival and flourishing as human beings.

Spirit-formed community

Forgive me for preaching!  But these are not abstract mind-games.  The question before us is “how shall we then live?”  The implication is that the gospel poses questions to us not only about how we think, but how we structure and negotiate the patterns of our life.  We can choose to live in the world on the world’s terms, doing the best we can, and somehow fitting the church into the cracks and crevices that remain; or we can do something different.

Fundamentally it comes down to the task of moral imagination.  Are we in fact capable of imaging different ways of living than those we are most familiar with?  Do we dare experiment with patterns of existence that are not sanctioned by the status quo, but bear a remarkable similarity to the vision that Jesus lifted up and embodied, and that the New Testament church found compelling enough to die for?

If we were in fact to try and imagine a different way of living what might it look like?  What landmarks might point the way for us? What kind of laboratory would we need for these experiments in kingdom living to take place?

I want to suggest a few parameters to you at least as a starting point.  Some of them find their basis in sociology and could be common to any faith-based community.  Others are more specifically Christian and therefore essential to any community that wants to be conscientious about living a Jesus-patterned life.

Proximity

At Reba Place we have found that living close together is essential for creating community.  The members of most churches no longer live within walking distance of the place where they worship, or even a significant number of those they see when they go there.  At its worst this separation leads to a sense of isolation and loneliness.  People don’t know their neighbors.  They feel they have no one to ask for help when they suffer an illness or emergency, or simply want to borrow a cup of sugar.

Living within walking distance of those you worship with increases the opportunities for fellowship and sharing.  When you see fellow churchgoers outside the context of Sunday morning you learn new things about them.  You move from the pseudo-community of hand shaking to the true community of embrace.  When two or three Christians meet even on a street corner, a bus stop, or at a local café or coffee shop, Jesus is there with them.

Mutual Aid

The concept of “mutual aid” sounds like something out of anarchist political theory and indeed it is.  But what people like Kropotkin were doing was looking at the example of communal Christian groups (like the Mennonites) and trying to explain what they saw.  Mutual aid refers to a manner of living together that resembles that of the early church in Acts 2:44-45 “All who believed were together and had all things in common, they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.”

Reba Place has practiced mutual aid as a form of sharing.  All community is built upon sharing.  Without sharing of all kinds there can’t be community of any kind.  But just as the gospel is not a disembodied message concerned only with our immaterial souls, so the Christian community must concern itself with the sharing of material possessions as well as the sharing of prayer requests.

Shared housing is the most widespread form of mutual aid that we have practiced.  When my wife was completing her doctoral dissertation at Northwestern we lived in a shared household with another family and two single men.  We all took turns with cooking supper for example and then when the meal was over we shared in doing the dishes.  On those many nights when my wife would leave to go to the library and I stayed home with two toddlers, I still had other adults to talk with and because of that much of the potential stress and loneliness of that time was relieved. Our marriage and my parenting benefited enormously from this shared living arrangement.

My wife traded childcare with other moms in our community.  Three different families would take care of our children during the week and then my wife would take care of all of their children on one other day. [Please note that I am not recommending that particular mathematical ratio!]

There is considerable work involved in living in this way.  You have to plan more, discuss more, and continually work at good communication and sensitivity.  But these are good things in and of themselves, and to try and structure your life in a way that you are not required to do any of these things seems foolishness.  And that brings me to the next principle.

Trust

Community requires a profound level of trust in order to succeed and benefit those that are a part of it.  Christian community is not built by merely living together or by sharing material possessions.  We are called and invited to the deepest sharing of our selves.  When Paul admonished us to weep with those who weep, laugh with those who laugh (Rom 12:15) he is describing the fundamentals of community.  Community is woven out of the fabric of shared joy and shared pain.  It is built surprisingly enough on sin, confession, and forgiveness.  If you do not know anyone closely enough to confess your sins to them, then you do not know anyone closely enough.

Christian community calls us toward maturity.  It forces us out of ourselves; it pulls us out of an unhealthy introspection, and into a world of which we are not the center (otherwise known as “reality”).  Community subverts the idolatry of the self.  This is a good thing.  And unless we intentionally structure our lives in ways that push and pull us towards maturity we are far too prone to self-centeredness and the atrophy of the soul.

Now I would contend that all three of these principles are important to all kinds of communities, but none of them in and of themselves nor all three together will identify a community as Christian.  What makes a community Christian is the presence of Christ working through the Holy Spirit to the glory of God the Father.  There are distinctive theological principles, actually theological realities,  that are relevant and essential to healthy Christian community.

Holy Spirit

Community is the work of God. More specifically, Christian community is the work of the Holy Spirit in gathering people around Jesus and empowering them to live their life with him.  Christian community is formed by God and sustained by God.  Without the empowering of the Holy Spirit Christian community is simply impossible.  It is not the ideals, the principles, or the structures that make community work.  It is God.

Worship

Because that is the case worship is the foundational practice of Christian community.  In worship we are reminded of the source of our being and existence, the author of our salvation, the only one to whom praise and honor are due.  True worship saves us from self-righteousness and a holier-than-thou attitude that always seeps in where people start taking Jesus seriously.  Worship purges us of idolatry and syncretism that are fatal to the life of communities (see Mars, Mammon, and Me again).  Worship becomes the way that we recenter, refocus, and renew our lives together.

Mission

Last but not least there is mission.  A community is like a shark it must keep moving in order to stay alive.  A community does not exist for itself but for God, and for the purposes of God in the world.  When communities start looking inward and sharing anxiety about their existence they begin to die.  Communities worshipping the one true God, become aware of the mission of God (the missio dei) and they are called forward and become a part of it.

Conclusion

So I want to challenge you to take the call to Christian community seriously, even as Graduate students here at Northwestern.  Are there ways in which the principles of proximity, mutual aid, and trust can be expressed in more powerful ways among you?  Does the current structure of your life together promote and nurture these things?  Can you imagine your life together being any different than it already is?

And in regards to God how can you look more effectively toward the Holy Spirit to empower your fellowship?  Are you as a community worshiping God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength?  Do you have a sense of common mission, or are you merely an affiliation of individuals in search of fellowship?  Perhaps we can talk about that during our discussion time.