The Power of Public Theology
By Dwight A. Moody, Dean of the Chapel
Georgetown University, KY
With similar emotion and energy, we pledge our allegiance to the nation and confess our faith in the one true God. Whether these two loyalties collaborate or collide is a matter of utmost importance and never more so than when a nation is at war.
It is therefore a good time to remember the Barmen Confession of 1934.
It was promulgated, not by gathered synod or official delegates, much less by patriarch or pope. On the contrary, the good work was done by ordinary ministers assembled on the banks of the Wupper River in northwest Germany where it converges with Belgium and the Netherlands.
"Theological Clarification of the Present State of the German Evangelical Churches" is the official title. Remember that in Europe "evangelical" is used differently than in these United States. It is simply a synonym for "Protestant."
Clarification was needed because the Christian community was falling in line-lock, stock and barrel, so to speak-with the new nationalist regime of Adolph Hitler.
From our vantage point of seventy years and untold suffering it is hard to understand why Christian people would fall for the racist oratory of Hitler.
Their silence in the face of the demagoguery of "Nation, Race and Fuhrer" is today considered a sad chapter in the history of twentieth-century civilization. Few resisted Hitler and fewer still risked life or limb to halt his Third Reich.
Some did and thereby became legends in our time.
Corrie Ten Boom hid Jews beneath the wooden floor of her father`s house. Today in Jerusalem there is a tree with her name planted along "The Avenue of the Righteous Gentiles."
Dietrich Bonhoeffer plotted to assassinate Hitler. He was arrested and sent to Flossenburg concentration camp where he was hanged eight days before the camp was liberated. This past year a movie about his life played to rave reviews around the country.
Martin Niemoeller left behind what may be the single most compelling witness of the world war era: "First they came for the Communists, and I didn`t speak up, because I wasn`t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn`t speak up, because I wasn`t a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn`t speak up, because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me."
Karl Barth launched a journal with the title "Theological Existence Today." In its pages he criticized the German Christians who advocated a synthesis of German National Socialism and the Christian Gospel.
While others took afternoon naps during the conclave at Barmen, he wrote the text of the most important Christian document of the decade.
"Jesus Christ is the one word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and death." Thus begins the first of six short articles of faith.
It was two things at once: a clarion call to the Christian community to repent of their fascination with a nationalist regime; and also a clear statement to the wider human community of the social and political relevance of theology.
Today we call it public theology.
It is to be distinguished from the irrational ranting of street preachers and the emotional appeals of televangelists. Public theology is the hard, heady stuff of a first rate intellect infused with a passion for the things of God and a conviction that such mental and imaginative work can not be confined to the church.
"God for a Secular Society: The Public Relevance of Theology" is the nicely-titled book by a spiritual descendent of Barth, Jurgen Moltmann.
He is one of many who take their platform, face the population at large, and present a version of gospel truth that interacts powerfully with the issues and events of our time.
Like the late James McClendon, Moltmann issues a call for such theological work to be done not only in the public square but also in the public university.
None surpass the eloquent work of Pope John Paul in this regard. He has taken his fearless pulpit to every corner of the globe, ignoring the clever admonition of Emily Dickinson to "tell the truth but tell it slant."
Sometimes in life and death, on any continent, in any century, the truth must be told straight, and never more so than in times of war, when loyalty to God and loyalty to country are most severely tested.
© 2004 Dwight A. Moody
Three Degrees of Separation
In 1893 a preacher came to town and stirred up folks against liquor. In his wake they prohibited church people from drinking, of course, and also from selling any form of alcohol.
They went further, refusing membership to those who rent property to a saloon, who deposit money in a bank that loaned money to the liquor business, who sell insurance to any person in the liquor industry and, finally, "who live in part or in whole on money collected from any person directly or indirectly connected with the whiskey business.
Even that was not enough: they chastised "any Mayor or Common Council or other Officers that grant license to any person engaged in the manufacturing, buying or selling of intoxicating liquors."
In the end, their policy of tracking those complicit in the forbidden practice led them to excommunicate "any person who buys or sells cattle, hogs, or other stock to be fed in part or in whole on distilled slop."
It was a policy of separation unto the third degree.
That split the church, of course, because liquor was the leading product of the town and among church members were landowners, insurance brokers, and the town mayor.
It was a wonder anyone was worthy of communion!
I know all this because exactly one hundred years later I was pastor of the congregation that has descended from these tee-totaling, sin-denouncing, straight-living Baptists.
I think about this when I read of recent efforts to separate the people of God from the vices of the world.
In the current case, the sin is not alcohol but abortion. The authorities are not evangelists but bishops.
The penalty, however, is the same-excommunication from the life of the congregation.
It began as a warning to a very public figure, one who aspires to the presidency of the country.
Exclusion stares him in the face because he is separated from the sin by only two degrees: securing the abortion is the sin; providing the abortion is one degree of separation; and funding those who provide the abortion is two degrees of separation.
Now the policy is being taken to the third degree: voting for people who provide the funds to pay those to do abortions constitutes the third degree of separation.
This means those who touch the "wrong" key in the voting booth are thereby complicit in the sin, and thus fall under commendation.
There is a serious public issue here: should church officials seek to influence-through opening or closing access to religious rituals-the voting patterns of both elected officials and the electing population?
How does such a practice affirm or deny the separation of church and state?
But my immediate concern is more religious than political.
If all who are connected to meanness, injustice, and outright wickedness by indirect and/or unintended ways are thereby banished from the sanctuary of God who, pray tell, will remain to worship the Lord?
All of us are no more than three degrees separated from any (and perhaps, every) sin-including pride, prejudice, and sexual assault.
The pension fund manager of another religious group said as much. Pious investors charged that their monies had purchased stock in the parent company of a cruise line which, in turn, was assisting a travel agent in booking a vacation package for a lesbian group.
Was the retirement fund, then, supporting homosexuality? Not directly and intentionally-unless you trace three degrees of separation.
She replied to the accusation (and here I paraphrase): "I suppose funds invested in any retirement fund would have this long distance connection to things we denounce" (which included such as liquor, tobacco, gambling, pornography or abortion).
And this "long distance connection" is precisely my point!
If we begin making the connection between every sin and any saint, we will soon disqualify every believer, including the Baptists and the Bishops. And then who will remain to stand and sing the old gospel song that reminds us of the humility and hope that constitutes the core of the Christian soul: "Not my brother, not my sister, but it`s me, O Lord, standing in the need of prayer."
© 2004 Dwight A. Moody
