I got back today from the evolving church conference in Oakville (Greater Toronto) Ontario today. Is there something happening in Canada or what? 700 people showed up for the Saturday. I came away deeply impressed by the commitment and character of the younger generations (20's-30's) and all the rest of us there too. I came away incredibly encouraged. Thanks to Nathan, Darryl, Chris, Steve for having me be part of it.

My quick take on the conference.

Ron Sider delivered another one of his standard excellent overviews of the stunning inequities between the rich developed world and the poverty stricken underdeveloped worlds. Ron always makes you think. He also describes how the Scriptures, with no compromise, call us to participate in ministering to this situation. Ron has some proposals that are always good. My push for Sider? Resist any bifurcation of personal salvation from social righteousness. Instead of saying that we must have both, talk of how there is no justification without participation in the justice-ification. Nevertheless, he was the first prophet of "holistic salvation. Also, let us resist quantifying justice in the terms of the system that causes injustice: capitalism, lest we foist its ills on the poor and make them poorer still.

Jim Wallis talked about the themes he has become famous for. How Christians should be pro-life both in regard to resisting abortion and the Iraq war. How Christians should neither be Republican or Democrat (he tried to translate these issues into Canadian terms). But he added how there will be no social justice without people of faith. And how poverty will not change until we have community with the poor and are touched by/in relationship to the poor. I greatly appreciate this aspect of Wallis. My push for Jim Wallis? Too often however his message can be taken as a call to get involved in National politics. For Wallis to be credible, I think he must address more directly how social action gets subsumed by the discourses of power (Foucault) and therefore will inevitably fail (in already has a record of failure) apart from a subversive body living this justice (the church).

Shane Claiborne was probably my personal favorite keynote. He described the process of living justice communally in the streets of North Philly. He described the simple ways they would address and engage poverty I thought this was amazing. My push for Shane? I think most suburban folk take a look at him or read his book and just say, "that could never be me." But quite the contrary! I think the ethos (that way of living seeing, understanding and embodying) of justice that Shane models could take shape in the suburban churches. But I fear the radical nature of his appearance might just say to a lot of people that could never be me. I don't believe it.

For more good stuff, see Darryl Dash's live blog. Thanks Darryl for all your great work.

RESISTING THE URGE TO MAKE JUSTICE ABOUT POLITICS
From politics to a politic.

I offer one last post on this whole subject … here goes.

If we are to avoid making justice into another program at our church we must resist the urge to make justice first about national politics, and then second about our own local politic. For inevitably we get caught up in national politics believing that finally now we are doing something. This then becomes an easy program to establish in our churches. Especially if a national television or radio show personality gets involved. Inevitably, the work of local justice becomes an after-thought. Because political activism is always easier than living as a presense with the poor.

I contend we necessarily should reverse that order of priority: put our local politic first and national politics second. (By "politic" I am referring to the way the word is used in the common phrase "body politic" meaning the ethos, the embodied way of living together inhabited by a collective entity). Others will surely argue that they can do both at the same time. I ask in response, can we engage the world with language about justice without a way of life that makes sense of the language we speak? I assert that there can be no "justice" detached from a social embodiment whereby it makes sense to those we preach. In the Great Giveaway, I argued that "our justice becomes just another disingenuous argument without a living visible representation of what justice looks like among a people of God" p. 154. In another place I argue that "without a Bodily presense in the world, there is little true engagment with the world except via individualist arguments … until we have a church that lives justice, it's just Jim Wallis arguing against Jerry Falwell." I think Jim Wallis would probably agree with most of what I have just said (at least I hope so).

This requires that we see God as working in a people not just in individuals. This requires a shift from the seeing the church as a recruiting station to get people saved as individuals and then prepare them to go out and be individual agents working to relieve suffering in the world (or to vote for the right policy). This requires that politics becomes more than a monolithic concept the church must participate in to seeing that a local church itself can embody a politic.

One does not have to read long in the pastoral epistles to see the ethos of justice that had developed among the earliest communities of Christ. Notice the justice that takes place around the Eucharist Table (1 Cor 11:22). Notice the way the widows and orphans are treated (James 1:27 etc.). Notice how the poor are treated (Gal 2:10; James 2). Notice how these discernments are not easy (Gal 6:1-10). Notice how they all shared responsibility for one another (2 Cor 8:13-15). This then spread justice into the world. My contention is that if we want to talk to the injustices in the US medical system, we begin first to undermine that system of immense predatory capitalist power by showing the world how to practice medical care to one another in our churches. From here we march in immense social authority in Christ to bring down the strongholds of the unjust powers that grip our nation's (US) medical system. That's just one example.

Foucault and Zizek
Foucault is well-known for seeing power as a homogeneous totality (the Totalizing System) incorporating all resistance within it. Zizek on the other hand, sees power as always disturbed by an excess which it can never quite control. For Foucault the Symbolic order is total, for Zizek the symbolic order is a field always in mediation between the subject and the political. Therefore, the Real is always in danger of irrupting (Badiou's term). Zizek advocates a politics therefore which does not resist the politics in power thereby becoming subsumed by the politics of power legitimating it and reinforcing that which is in power already. Instead, Zizek says "play the symbolllic order game to the hilt, revealing its own lack, bringing it down by the power of its own excess."

I know, for those of you not versed in this rhetoric it's heady. My apologies. But would you try to let it stretch you?

Put in other words. Foucault would take a look the Vietnam War protesters as playing into the hands of the governmental powers who sought to keep the war going for their own purposes. Richard Nixon etc., could say "see, I told you so! Here in the US we have freedom to be able to protest. They don't have that in North Vietnam." The protests became subsumed by the powers and actually legitimated the ongoing injustice. I think Zizek would prefer (I'm conjecturing here) the Jane Fonda move - "oh you say I am free, OK I'll go to Hanoi and speak what I really think." An even more effective strategy I believe is for hundreds of evangelical churches to gather together and resist allowing any young men/women to participate in the war altogether (and ask the Vietnamese Christians to join in). In other words, dare the powers to wage war against the religious freedom it claims to be fighting for. Imagine if 1,000's of evangelical churches in the 60's had refused any of its members the moral authority to fight in an unjust war? How soon would that have ended the war. This gets to my point, until we embody the justice we are talking about locally in our communities, our justice in the wider context gets subsumed by the dominant forces, even injustice itself.

I hope to discuss at the evolving church conference some more examples of how I see that local justice always leads us to be a better participation in national politics.

IN SUMMARY
I don't anticipate presenting all these 4 posts at the evolving church conference. What I hope for is a brief presentation on the hottest of these topics and then generating discussion of how we're all doing these things. Should be a great time. Looking forward to it!

Final question - CAN MEGA CHURCHES DO THE WORK OF CHRIST'S JUSTICE?
I think the kind of churches that will have the hardest time with a MORE ORGANIC, LOCAL and EMBODIED JUSTICE are the mega churches. Because if justice is relational, mutual and sharing of all things, this is just plain harder the bigger you get. I would argue that the mega churches with the most resourses often do the poorest job of social justice per capita. Don't get me wrong they are doing plenty of mercy projects. SOME VERY HIGH PROFILE … but is it justice? Or is it a large relief and mercy program, which again is important, but from post #1, I suggest it is not justice. Then again, I know at least 2 larger churches (2500+) that are doing awesome work for Christ's justice.

RESISTING THE URGE TO MAKE JUSTICE ABOUT INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS - from individual rights to right-eousness

I've been sketching out here on the blog the ideas I am going to present at the seminar I am leading at the Evolving Church Conference. These are extensions of the chapter on justice in my book the Great Giveaway. Hope some of you out there will join me.
My next point here in this presentation has to do with making justice about individual rights.
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I think Christians (especially evangelicals) too easily make justice about individual rights. It's an easy default move when we don't have visible justice going on in the local body itself. I think articulating justice in terms of rights enables us to put justice at a distance because it enables justice to become a concept separate from the way we engage victims, the poor and relationships in everyday life. I believe that even if we defend the establishment of some group's or individual's rights, we in effect distance ourselves from communion and reconciliation with them. For our relationship becomes defined by rights, what is yours, what is mine, what is your right, what is my right. We are not brought together in a unity and reconciliation that bespeaks the justice God is working here in this relationship. There are times when individual rights might make sense as a tool to navigate justice in the world, but alone it does not accomplish as much as we think.

Now before every body gangs up on me here, I believe we must pursue justice outside the church. I am all for the efforts to make our social system and national politics more just. And I will talk more about this in the next post. But what we must see from our own story in God's relationship with the world thru the nation of Israel and in the Son Jesus Christ, is that justice in God's eyes is about a horizontal transformative reconciliation that brings people into healed relationship with one another as a result of the concurrent healed relationship we share with God. If we read the accounts of justice say in Ezekiel 18:5-9, Isa 58:3-7, Amos 5:21-24, Micah 3, righteousness, that is right relationship with God and fellow human beings and all of creation, is at the core of what justice is for the Hebrew mind of the OT.

The problem is that defining justice as a concept born out of democracy and capitalism (individual rights or equal opportunity, equal distribution of resources and access to economy) too easily enables us to take a holiday on the justice of God in Christ in the body. We can argue, defend and protest for rights. But ultimately to get to righteousness (I am following J.D. Dunn who displays how justice and righteousness in the OT are one and the same) we must go beyond rights to righteousness.

I remember becoming an advocate (along with others in our church) for someone who was poor and an ex-convict who was unable to pay the rent. We could have advocated renter's rights. We could have brought the person into a point of contention between himself, the owner of the apartment and myself a pastor and indeed the whole church. Or we could bring everyone around a table to discuss the situation (even though the building owner had never been to our church gathering). We could pray confess sin, seek reconciliation, offer to step in and make things right. We did the latter, with coffee and pastries. The building owner was amazed. I saw a miracle happen there. I'll discuss it more at the conference.

There are of course 2 main figures who have helped me see why we must seek righteousness in our justice, not only individual rights. They are both somewhat controversial, Stanley Hauerwas and John Milbank. I direct you to their writings for more understanding on this.

Stanley Hauerwas' Views on Justice in a Democracy
Stanley is famous for saying, provocatively that "the first task of the church is not to make the world more just, but to make the world the world." A similarly provocative title comes from ch. 6 of his book After Christendom? Is entitled "Why Justice is a bad idea for Christians." I can't go into detail here. Suffice it to say that Hauerwas seeks to illumine how working for equality, freedom, individual rights ad the pursuit of selfishness, er I mean happiness for all, might indeed perpetuate the practices that have created the poverty in the first place.

John Milbank's "Ontology of Violence"
Milbank follows a similar line of thought to Hauerwas through different tactics. He narrates how democracy and capitalism came into place via the social contract (Rousseau) and the protection of one's own work through private property rites (John Locke). He shows how this created a system based upon the assumption that individuals are autonomous, independent and at war against one another for power, authority and capital (he bases this on his famous read of Duns Scotus). This system then (of democracy and capitalism) is designed to maintain the rights of each individual to pursue self-interest and personal accumulation without killing one another. It is an "ontology of violence." For Milbank, the secular society's justice is a parody of the ecclesia purporting a simulacrum unity in the place of the true unity we in Christ receive around the Eucharist table. I don't need to explain all of this here. For those who are interested I urge you to read William Cavanaugh's article in Radical Orthodoxy or his book Theopolitical Imagination which are generally more accessible intro's to this material.
The main point here to consider is, as I said in my book, "Democracy and Capitalism fundamentally play on a politics that does not restore humanity to a mutual participation in God but replaces such a participation with a politics placed based upon discrete wills of all individuals getting along without killing each another" p.163 the Great Giveaway. In other words, by basing our justice conceptually in individual rights we not only can distance ourselves from justice, enabling us to make it into a program, but we may in essence support a way of justice which undermines the very justice we seek. We must go again, beyond rights to righteousness.

Milbank and Hauerwas, two of my favorite theologians, are often disdained in emergent church land. I however think there is stuff to be learned here. What do you think? Do you find this offensive? Does it offend the sensibilities that seek to ward off anything that smacks at all of exclusivism, fundamentalism, withdrawal from society or any other such maladies?

Post # 2 - RESISTING THE URGE TO SEPARATE PERSONAL FROM SOCIAL SALVATION or Going beyond being justified to being justice-ified.

If we are to avoid turning justice into another church program., we must first resist the urge to make salvation "about me." Salvation we say is about a personal relationship with God. In Christ I am justified before God. After being justified through faith in Christ, I then set about to go to the next stage. I pursue personal holiness and social justice. Social justice becomes something I do after I get saved. Personal salvation and social justice remain split by the way we individualize salvation. The propensity to separate personal from social salvation runs deep.

I contend that we should fight this urge because it is this split that allows us essentially to turn social justice into a program. Justice becomes an "add-on" to personal salvation as opposed to an inextricable part of what it means to live the new life in God. This propensity is so deep that even Ron Sider, in his self defined "holistic salvation" still separates personal from social. (in Good News and Good Works: A theology for the whole gospel, Sider maintains a strict separation between evangelism of individuals and social action 158-165). Yet imagine what it would be like in our churches, if there were no such division. If we were not invited to go forward as individuals to receive something, but instead come forward to become part of something, what God is doing in the world through Jesus Christ - the reconciliation of all men and women with himself, each other and all of creation, which BTW inextricably includes my own personal reconciliation with God.

I believe the bifurcation of personal from social salvation cannot help but make justice into an add-on. It is something people do after they have been saved. It then becomes a program. As I said in the Great Giveaway, "For evangelicals therefore, social action is primarily saved individuals acting as Christians out in the world against powerful sinful social forces. And we confine the work of social justice largely to the arena outside the church." Justice becomes a program individuals sign up for instead of a way of life we live and inhabit the world with.

There are two theological culprits here that make possible this separation of personal from social salvation. One is a narrow "penal" view of the atonement. The other is the Lutheranized doctrine of justification by faith. I don't intend to go deep here. Just offer places for further thinking.

Penal View of the Atonement: In regards to the penal view of the atonement, salvation is defined as accepting the pardon of God for my sin accomplished at the cross when Jesus, being my substitute, paid the penalty for my sin. This view of the atonement, some say, leads us often to making our salvation a legal transaction for self-possession. Participating in the righteousness of God, his reconciliation being worked out in the world through the victory on the cross becomes an after thought
I am not willing to dump the substitionary atonement. Its place in history and the church is too important. I am ready however to recognize its limits. Given our post-Christian context, I think we should rely less on Western legal notions of justice here, and stay closer to the Hebrew representational character of substitionary justice modeled by the priest laying his hands upon the lamb representing the sins of all Israel being taken away. But I also think we should adhere more closely to the Christus Victor (Gustaf Aulen) and Classical Views of the atonement where Jesus is seen as the Victor, the King, the one who has defeated sin, death and evil and now reigns in anticipation of the Final Kingdom of God. For here we cannot possibly receive salvation without participating in that salvation, the victory of God and the Reign of Christ over sin, death and evil. Here personal and social are so entwined we cannot distinguish them. This of course need not diminish personal conversion, it just clarifies we are being converted into a whole new mission and way of life.


Justification by Faith: Likewise, in regards to the Lutheranized doctrine of justification by faith, I think we should pay heed to a broader understanding, perhaps the "new perspective on Paul." I am not in total agreement with all this literature, but I believe that Stendahl, E.P. Sanders, James Dunn and NT Wright have all helped us see that Paul's doctrine of justification by faith was not about the individual's battle to be good through self-effort through the law. Rather Paul's' doctrine was an argument against the exclusivism of the Jews against the Gentiles. The law was the covenantal badge for being a member of the people of God, which signified the Jews were God's people. Paul claims that marker is now justification by faith, an entrance into a new righteousness won by God thru the person and work of Jesus Christ. And so for Paul, justification isn't for the relieving of the Jewish guilt conscience, which is always striving to maintain the standard of God's law. It is for the establishment of a new righteousness in a people through Christ, foretold by the prophets concerning the coming Kingdom of God. Once we see justification in this light, justification cannot be separated from being part of the new justice/righteousness God is working in the world. We cannot receive salvation without becoming part of what God is doing to bring justice/righteousness to the world through Christ.

This is all summarized by a non-individualist (American) reading of 2 Cor 5: 17ff. For anyone united in Christ, there is a new creation: the old order has gone, a new order has already begun. (REV). We have entered into the marvelous world of God reconciling all things to himself (vs.18) ... that we might become the righteousness (justice) of God (vs. 21) For this reading of righteousness see James Dunn The Justice of God.

And so… if we are to resist the urge to make justice into another church program we must overturn the split between personal and social salvation. We must go from preaching that all must accept Christ as personal savior to you are invited to enter a relationship with through Christ that changes everything. We must go from being justified … to being justice-ified. Justice can no longer be something we do, it is who we are.

Can anyone offer examples how this approach might impact the ethos of justice in their local church? I hope to give an example or two of how I've seen this take shape in our church at the Evolving Church Conference.

Next post - HOW NOT TO MAKE JUSTICE INTO A PROGRAM AT YOUR LOCAL CHURCH #3 RESISTING THE URGE TO MAKE JUSTICE ABOUT INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS or Going beyond individual rights to God's righteousness

Hey all ... anyone interested in spending some time with Brian McLaren? He's coming to Northern Seminary for a day on March 28th. He'll be presenting twice - Lecture 1: "Ancient Paths: How do we intergrate historic continuity with contemporary reality?" and Lecture 2: "Contemporary Crises: How do we bring the ancient gospel to bear on today's global crises?" Lecture 1 is at 10:30 am & Lecture 2 is at 1:30 p.m. Lunch will be served in between. In the 2nd lecture, it sounds like he'll be presenting some of the foundational ideas coming forth in his next book. It should be a great time to gather, listen, and share some food together.

I will be there. I'd be glad to see and meet anybody over the lunch time. Also, up/rooted (the emergent cohort from the north west but all are welcome) will be meeting that nite on campus to have a follow up on Brian's discussions during the day. I'll be there leading that discussion.

Unfortunately it ain't free. Cost for the lectures is $60. You can register online at: http://bradylectures2007.eventbrite.com or download a brochure here--simply fill out the registration form and mail it to us with your payment. All registrations must be received by March 23!

I'm looking forward to a great day. Let me know if you're coming.

I am getting ready (a minute here and a minute there) for leading a discussion at the evolving church conference in a few weeks. My subject will be "Justice at a distance." Or how can we resist making justice into another church program. Actually this is an extension of my chapter on "Community in but not of Capitalism" in the Great Giveaway.

It is always easier to do justice at a distance. Normally evangelical churches do justice "down in the city" (because often we're suburban churches) or far enough away that it does not come into direct contact with our lives. It's a program. I don't mean to demean these efforts. I'm just saying this is the way we do justice. Or we defer to the government, or to social agencies or parachurch organizations all of which we support in some overt monetary and prayerful way. Yet this too strangely keeps justice at a distance. And again justice is a program.

The battle we are in … is to recover a connection between the church and the poor, to bridge the distance, to see Christ's justice as a way of life. To not allow the poor to be technologized or become a digital image splashed on a screen at a fundraiser, to not allow the poor to become a program that distances us, somehow we must seize opportunities to be with the poor, talk to the poor and have them be with us. For as much as these acts of mercy are truly needed, I believe it is only in the "physical" connection that speaking truth, showing love, spiritual and physical healing and real justice can take root in people's lives. I hope to explain why in the posts to follow.

The kinds of things I hope to propose are so modest, so local and so basic that any church can do them. They are things that might seem all too obvious. We have done them in the past. We are so capable of doing them again. These kinds of acts are not going to threaten the whole structure of anyone's life. But they may challenge how we live and open our hearts to the poor. These small acts may chase some more well off and "can't be bothered" types from your church. But there is no need for great dramatics, no great programs that only a church of 2,500 could do. Rather I hope to propose some things that every small church could do with little or no money and just a little time, love and kindness and generosity. Yet I see these things being revolutionary if every evangelical church in N. America could make them part of our way of life.

Of course national politics has its place. Social agencies and para church groups are awesome. But in order to undercut the social fabric that under girds the evils, the sin and destruction of certain social structures, another socializing force must first exist to show the way. It must be face-to-face embodied presence of Christ that isn't afraid to touch. It must be the Body of Christ inhabiting the world in His distinctive way of justice.

This approach to justice in the end asks that justice not be a program at our local church, but the virtue of a people that gather there, not something we do, but rather something we are.

Dostoevsky illustrates why justice cannot ultimately done at a distance in Brothers Karamazov (Part 2, Book 5 chapter 4 "Rebellion") Here Dostoevsky has cynical Ivan wax eloquent to Alyosha about the plight of the poor and the suffering. He point blank says he has never been able to understand how it is possible to love one's neighbors.

… and I mean precisely one's neighbors, because I can conceive of the possibility of loving those far away. I read somewhere about a saint, John the Merciful, who, when a hungry, frozen beggar came to him and asked him to warm him, lay down with him, put his arms around him, and breathed into the man's reeking mouth that was festering with the sores of some horrible disease. I'm convinced he did so in a state of frenzy, that it was a false gesture, that this act of love was dictated by some self-imposed penance. If I must love my fellow man, he had better hide himself, for no sooner do I see his face than there's an end to my love for him.

A little later in the conversation Ivan says …

Beggars, particularly well-born beggars, should never show themselves in person, but should do their begging exclusively through newspaper advertisements. The idea of loving one's neighbor is possible only as an abstraction: it may be conceivable to love one's fellow man at a distance, but it is almost never possible to love him at close quarters. If life were like a theatre, the ballet where the beggars come out in silken rags and beg while they perform the graceful steps of a ballet, then I suppose we could enjoy looking at them. But even then, to enjoy looking at someone is still not the same as loving him.

This eloquent piece of cynicism reveals how far we fall short when we do justice at a distance. It is the struggle for all of us evangelicals whose first move has often been to do justice separate from the regular on going life of the church. When we pay others to do our justice, when we argue for policies that help people we never knew, when we send teams down to the urban landscape to help build homes for the poor we don't really know, we are left untouched. And the gift is often impersonal and spatialized by the existing structures which overwhelm it. None of this denies the importance of these ways of doing mercy. It is just that they leave us separated from the poor. And many times these efforts don't transform the structures because of this.

All of these other efforts should not be discarded. They should just be built upon the foundation of the church as a living embodiment of God's justice taking shape in the world. I hope to make three posts about three urges we must resist if we would see justice take shape in/around the local neighborhood church.
1.THE URGE TO SEPARATE PERSONAL FROM SOCIAL SALVATION
2. THE URGE TO MAKE JUSTICE ABOUT INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS
3. THE URGE TO MAKE JUSTICE ABOUT POLITICS

Any helpful comments?

PS Did you see the news piece about the suburbs now having more people in poverty than the city, they're just harder to find? whoah ...

(sorry to everyone for wiping out the comments from this post when I retitled it)