First Blessings

Apostles Anglican Church
Fr. John A. Roop

Politics and the Kingdom of God

Session Two: Standards of Ethical Authority

The Lord be with you.
And with your spirit.
Let us pray.

Blessed Lord, who caused all Holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience and the comfort of your Holy Word we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Introduction
There are these fair sized lizards where we vacation in Florida — probably North American Green Anoles — that I’ve been trying to catch for decades. I can get close, but they always elude me. And then it dawned on me not long ago just why I can’t catch one; I don’t really want to. I can’t imagine that it would be good for either of us for me to wrap my hand around a lizard — one with teeth — who doesn’t really want to be caught. The first requirement for successfully catching a lizard seems to be a desire, an intent, to really do it.

Like catching lizards, the first step in developing and living a Christian ethic is actually wanting to do so. Many of us, myself included, like the idea of it, but we are a bit afraid of the reality of it, and a bit hesitant to engage the hard work necessary for it. Old habits engendered by the Fall and the false, rival stories that have formed us, die hard. But, we are called to it, and Christian faithfulness and obedience require it. And, we pray for it: Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Today, we will take another step toward developing a Christian ethic by examining the sources of authority for that ethical standard. How do we find right and wrong in a fallen world, which, of course, includes the fallen political system that governs us? What are the standards of authority?

The Standards of Ethical Authority
Let’s start with two basic questions.

How does a Christian determine right and wrong?

What are the authoritative sources of Christian ethics?

Let’s begin with the second question: What are the authoritative sources of Christian ethics? Where do we look for Christian standards of right and wrong?

Scripture
The Church, until relatively recently, has considered Scripture to be the ultimate authority for faith and practice, for what to believe and for how to live out that belief in the world. Scripture is the governing ethical authority for the Christian; that is the historical and ecumenical conviction of the Church, and it is the conviction that Anglicans hold, or should hold. Our first and last appeals are always to Scripture. But, Scripture does not always speak directly or unambiguously to each moral issue we encounter. Are there other sources of ethical authority to which we might look in such cases?

Tradition
We do not have to draw solely upon our own limited resources, or even our own reading of Scripture. The Church embodies an unbroken tradition from the calling of Abram until today. This tradition expresses the mind of the Church – formed by the Holy Spirit – on many moral issues. When Scripture seems silent or perhaps unclear, we may ask if the Church has spoken on the issue. Of course, the Church itself is not always of one mind and voice. What if the Church is divided? Then, we might consider the Vincentian Canon, a method proposed by St. Vincent of Lerins (d. 455) for discerning Christian truth. He proposed that we accept as true “that which has been believed everywhere, always, and by all.” Essentially, the hallmarks of truth are ubiquity, antiquity, and unanimity. How does this work? If an ethical standard is isolated to a small region and is not widespread throughout the church, it is suspect. If it is novel, appearing only recently in time, and not found throughout Church history, it is suspect. If it is embraced only by the few and not by the many, it is suspect. We look for tenets that have been believed throughout the Christian world, throughout the Christian age, and throughout the Christian body. This isn’t a perfect test, but it is helpful.

Let’s take the issue of the blessing of same-sex marriages, for example. How does the practice fare under the Vincentian Canon? It fails every test that St. Vincent proposes. The practice is isolated to small parts of the Western Church; it fails the test of ubiquity. The practice is novel; nowhere do we find it in the history of the Church. It fails the test of antiquity. The Church is divided over the practice. It is more nearly correct to say that one small group in the Church has divided itself from the universal Church over this practice. It fails the test of unanimity. So, even if Scripture were not clear on the issue of same-sex marriage (and it is), the Tradition of the church is quite explicitly opposed to the practice.

Christian Community
Because a moral worldview is best discerned and lived out in community, the Christian community itself – the parish, the diocese, the province – serves as an important source of ethical insight, formation, and embodiment. The Holy Spirit works collectively as well as individually. We can take this a step further. In our particular tradition, the parish is governed by a rector, the diocese by a bishop, and the province by the college of bishops. We have a hierarchy of authority within our community that speaks – as necessary – to moral issues. Though we must always act in accordance with our own understanding and conscience, we also submit ourselves to the formative power of the community and its leaders to inform our understanding and to shape our conscience.

We might add other sources of ethical standards to our list, but these three are of first importance: Scripture, Tradition, and Community. In primary position among the three is Scripture.

If Scripture speaks directly and unambiguously to a moral issue, it also speaks authoritatively.

As an aside, in Anglicanism we sometimes hear “the three-legged stool” proposed as an authoritative ethical standard: Scripture, Reason, and Tradition. Some even go further and offer the Wesleyan Quadrilateral: Scripture, Reason, Tradition, and Experience. While there is some validity to both of these suggestions, in modern practice they have typically been misapplied to pit Reason, Tradition, and Experience against the clear teaching of Scripture. “Yes, I know what Scripture says…but my reason (or my experience) leads me to a different conclusion.” While we do acknowledge the need for other authorities to inform our ethical discernment, Scripture, if it speaks to the issue, is always the prime authority. We may never negate the teaching of Scripture based upon these other sources of authority.

This conviction leads us to consider two essential questions:

How does Scripture speak ethically? What modes of instruction does it employ?

How do we read, interpret, and apply the ethical content of Scripture faithfully and effectively?

We begin with the various ways Scripture provides moral instruction.

Modes of Appeal to Scripture (adapted from The Moral Vision of the New Testament)

Richard Hays, in his book The Moral Vision of the New TestamentI, identifies four modes in which Scripture speaks to us (instructs us) ethically:

• Rules: direct commandments or prohibitions of specific behaviors

• Principles: general frameworks of moral consideration by which particular decisions about action are to be governed

• Paradigms (examples): stories or summary accounts of characters who model exemplary conduct (or negative paradigms: characters who model reprehensible conduct)

• A Symbolic World (ethos/worldview): an overarching framework of thought and practice that represents the character of God, the human condition, and the narrative or worldview in which God’s people live and move and have their being; the general understanding and “spirit” of the community

Let’s very briefly consider examples of each of these modes.

Rules
“You shall not commit adultery” is a rule; it is a clear prohibition of a specific behavior. We might extend the concept of adultery to include many forms of marital unfaithfulness, but it must include the basic notion of illicit sexual relations. If a married man comes to me for pastoral counseling and tells me God has spoken to him and endorsed his extramarital affair, I am certain – beyond any doubt – that he is wrong and is either deluded or self-serving. I can point him to this rule.

Principles
“Love your neighbor as you love yourself,” is a principle; it does not command or prohibit a specific behavior, but rather gives a general responsibility that has to be fleshed out in detail. When I examine or consider a particular behavior I must ask myself: Is this allowed or compelled under the principle of loving my neighbor? My neighbor’s dog has been using my lawn as his toilet and I have complained several times to no avail. So one day I decide that the next time this happens I will simply take the neighbor’s dog to the pound. After all, the Bible gives no rule against taking a dog to the pound. But, this would certainly violate the principle of love for neighbor. The principle covers many specific behaviors without specifying each one as a rule does.

Paradigms/Examples
There is another question we could have asked about loving one’s neighbor: Who is my neighbor? You know that Jesus was asked that question. To answer it he didn’t give a specific commandment about everyone who falls into the category of neighbor, nor did he state a principle of neighborly identity. Instead, he gave a paradigm, an example of someone who acted as a neighbor: the Good Samaritan. Rather than restrict the category of neighbor by commandment, he broadened it by example. This is often the case with paradigms; they open outward instead of collapsing inward.

Ethos
Ethos is just the way of being of a people, the cultural standards that govern their life together. Christian theologian Stanley Hauerwas was asked to testify before congress about Christian ethics and abortion. He said this — not an exact quote: We Christians do not murder our children. Here he was speaking not from rules or principles or paradigms, though he probably could have. He was speaking about the Christian ethos in which children are a gift from the Lord, image bearers of God. He was speaking about a way of being and culture in which the murder of babies is simply unthinkable.

Summary
So, Scripture speaks to us, provides ethical instruction, in several modes/ways: rules, principles, paradigms, and ethos. To say that Scripture is silent on a moral issue simply because it does not contain an explicit positive commandment or a negative prohibition regarding the issue is to ignore the many ways that Scripture can and does address moral issues. We, perhaps, tend to put the greatest weight on rules because they are explicit and clear. But, Richard Hays actually argues that, of the four modes of Scriptural authority we have mentioned, rules constitute the weakest type because they are typically so precise and limited in scope. Principles, paradigms, and ethos broaden outward to encompass many more behaviors and are therefore more broadly applicable.

Let’s summarize what we have discussed this far.

Scripture is the primary (ultimate) ethical authority for Christians. If Scripture speaks directly and unambiguously to a moral issue, it also speaks authoritatively.

Scripture speaks in several modes: rules, principles, paradigms (examples), and ethos/worldview. In moral discernment we must consider all the modes in which Scripture speaks, not just rules.

When Scripture does not speak to an issue or doesn’t speak unambiguously, we may look to secondary authorities: Tradition and Community. But, these may never be used in such a manner as to conflict with or negate Scripture.

Focal Images
My eyes are not so very good. When I want to read Scripture — or anything for that matter — I need my glasses, these lenses that provide focus and clarity. Even with my glasses, some things in Scripture are still not clear, still not in focus. St. Peter felt the same way as his comment on St. Paul’s writings shows:

There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures. You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability (2 Pe 3:16b-17).

This brief verse and a half is remarkable in what it says.

• Peter finds Paul difficult to understand, or at least Peter knows that others find Paul difficult to understand.

• Peter includes the writings of Paul as Scripture. Even at this very early stage, the Apostles and other contributors to the New Testament were conscious of the weight of their words.

• We must take care not to be led astray in our reading of Scripture, which implies that there are ways to read Scripture well and truly: “to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life,” as Cranmer has us pray.

What we need are some lenses that better focus our reading of Scripture, particularly when we are reading Scripture for ethical formation. Richard Hays has identified three set of such lenses that the New Testament authors offer us; he calls them focal images because they bring the New Testament images into better focus: Community, Cross, and New Creation. Because I also want to include the Old Testament as a source of ethical authority, I have expanded his list to include three Old Testament images as well: Creation, Covenant, and Exodus.

Old Testament Focal Images

Creation

Covenant

Exodus

New Testament Focal Images

Cross

Community/Family/Koinonia

Coming Kingdom

Any ethical reading of Scripture is enhanced and clarified by engaging with and honoring these focal images.

Creation
“We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible,” we say in Nicene Creed. All things come from God and are subject to him. Creation prior to the fall expressed his will perfectly. Creation after the fall is subject to futility and longs for its freedom from corruption (cf Rom 8). Creation will be restored in the new heavens and the new earth. Recall how Jesus appealed to the focal image of creation in his discussion of divorce: Moses permitted divorce – because of the hardness of your hearts (fall) – but from the beginning (creation) it was not so. When considering the issue of same-sex marriage, we might use this focal image of creation. What does God’s original creation tell us about human relationships, complementarity of the sexes, and the purpose of marriage?

One other important note about the focal image of creation: it implies that all the world – with its cultures and governments – belong to God. The question is sometimes posed to Christians, “What right do you have to insist that your morals be reflected in the laws that govern those who don’t believe as you believe?” Our answer is simply that God is the Creator of the universe and that all authority – certainly in moral matters – belongs to him. Our appeal is to creation and to the Creator.

Covenant
God called Abram and made a covenant with him, that through Abram and his offspring God might redeem and renew the world and bless all peoples. God chose to work through a people made holy by his presence among them. The chief human responsibilities in the covenant were faithfulness to God and obedience, which implies holiness. So, as we look at any moral issue there are covenant questions to ask: Along which path lies the greatest faithfulness to God? Along which path lies obedience? Along which path lies holiness?

Exodus
More than by anything else, Israel was shaped by the experience of slavery and Exodus. The Exodus event formed Israel’s ethos and Law. One example is particularly significant, that of Sabbath observance. God gives Israel two reasons for Sabbath-keeping; one reason draws upon the focal image of Creation, and the other upon the focal image of Exodus. Let’s look at each.

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy (Ex 20:8-11).

Notice here the appeal to creation. God, by his own actions and by his blessing, built the Sabbath day observance into the fabric of creation. The Sabbath reminds man that he is the image bearer of God: not a human doing but a human being. And, because that is true for all creation, no one among God’s people works on the Sabbath: male, female, servants, sojourners, livestock. Servants are given the Sabbath because they too are part of creation. This is the appeal to the focal image of creation. Now, let’s consider the second account of the Ten Commandments is Deuteronomy.

Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the LORD your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant, or your ox or your donkey or any of your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates, that you male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the LORD you God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day (Dt 5:12-15).

This reasoning for Sabbath observance appeals to the focal image of the Exodus. Why do you keep the Sabbath? Because, as free people, as people God delivered from slavery, you can and you must keep the Sabbath, in honor and memory of God’s saving action on your behalf. In Egypt you couldn’t keep the Sabbath; in freedom you must. But there is more here. You must give your children, your slaves, the sojourner, and even the animals the Sabbath, because you know what it was like to be a slave, to be treated like an animal (or worse), and to have no time to rest and worship. Sabbath-keeping is an issue of justice, compassion, and worship. So, an appeal to the focal image of the Exodus must include matters of freedom, justice, compassion, and worship.

In summary, the three Old Testament focal images I propose are Creation, Covenant, and Exodus. The New Testament focal images proposed by Richard Hays are Cross, Community, and Coming kingdom.

Cross
Here I will let Richard Hays speak:

Jesus’ death on a cross is the paradigm for faithfulness to God in this world. The community expresses and experiences the presence of the kingdom of God by participating in “the koinonia of his sufferings” (Phil. 3:10). Jesus’ death is consistently interpreted in the New Testament as an act of self-giving love, and the community is consistently called to take up the cross and follow in the way that his death defines… . The death of Jesus carries with it the promise of the resurrection, but the power of the resurrection is in God’s hands, not ours. Our actions are therefore to be judged not by their calculable efficacy in producing desirable results but by their correspondence to Jesus’ example (MVNT, p. 197).

That last sentence is particularly important: we do not base our moral decisions upon practicality (what is most likely to work), but upon how nearly they image the cross of Christ.

Hays continues:

The New Testament writers consistently employ the pattern of the cross precisely to call those who possess power and privilege to surrender it for the sake of the weak (see, e.g., Mark 10:42-45, Rom. 15:1-3, 1 Cor. 8:1-11:1).

He concludes by saying:

It is precisely the focal image of the cross that ensures that the followers of Jesus – men and women alike – must read the New Testament as a call to renounce violence and coercion (MVNT, p. 197).

So, the focal image of the cross leads to these type of questions:

Is this the way of self-giving and self-sacrifice?

Is there any element or threat of violence or coercion in this moral action?

Community/Family/Koinonia
In this focal image, Hays shifts the focus from the individual to the community (the church, not as a hierarchical organization, but as the visible, incarnational body of Christ):

The church is a countercultural community of discipleship, and this community is the primary addressee of God’s imperatives. The biblical story focuses on God’s design for forming a covenant people [a clear reference to the OT focal image of covenant]. Thus, the primary sphere of moral concern is not the character of the individual but the corporate obedience of the church… . The community, in its corporate life, is called to embody an alternative order that stands as a sign of God’s redemptive purposes in the world… . The coherence of the New Testament’s ethical mandate will come into focus only when we understand that mandate in ecclesial terms, when we seek God’s will not by asking first, “What should I do,” but “What should we do?” (MVNT, pp. 196-197)

The church may sometimes do together what the individual cannot do alone. And, when I ask what the church’s response to a moral issue should be, that initially removes the pressure from me and allows me to see the issue more clearly. Then, I can consider what my role is in corporate obedience. Importantly, the church provides the necessary spiritual, emotional, and physical support necessary for individual obedience.

We also have to add this note, which was vitally important in the first century and is perhaps even more so now. The Christian Community — the Church, the Koinonia — is a multi-racial, multi-ethnic global body defined solely by our unity in Christ.

Matthew 12:46–50 (ESV): 46 While he was still speaking to the people, behold, his mother and his brothers stood outside, asking to speak to him. 48 But he replied to the man who told him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” 49 And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! 50 For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”

For St. Paul this notion of unity — for him it was unity of Jews and Gentiles — was the litmus test of the Gospel. If Jews and Gentiles could not accept one another in Christ, could not sit at the Lord’s Table together, then they put lie to the Gospel; they stripped it of its power. As long as we think of the Church only in local terms — only in terms of people like us — we have failed to view life through this focal lens. That means that we must consider seriously what our responsibilities are to the global church, to all our brothers and sisters in Christ. The Christian migrants massed at our Southern border are my brothers and sisters. The Christians being bombed in Gaza are my brothers and sisters. The Christian children in sweat shops around the world working in inhumane and dangerous conditions so that I can have cheap products are my brothers and sisters. And so on. This focal lens broadens our views; it keeps us from becoming myopic.

Coming Kingdom / New Creation
In the Lord’s prayer we say, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” The people of God are to live in the Kingdom of God proleptically – bringing the fullness of the Kingdom of God backwards from the future into our present. N. T. Wright summarizes this approach with a question and a challenge.

Question: What would it look like if God were in charge of this situation/decision/activity, etc.?

Challenge: Now, live that way, because, in the ascension, Jesus has been enthroned and is now LORD over all creation.

In and through Jesus, God became King. The Kingdom has come, though not yet fully. This puts us in conflict with the kingdoms of this world which are still in rebellion against the rule of God. Many of our moral dilemmas can be clarified by this focal image by considering how this dilemma would be addressed in God’s coming kingdom, i.e., in God’s righteous rule. How would immigration be handled in God’s kingdom? Would there even be borders or immigrants at all, and, if not, what does that say about Christian response to governmental policies? What about living wage in the Kingdom? What about redemptive violence in the Kingdom? And so forth. This is a particularly powerful focal images because it moves us from how things are, to how things will be, and how we should strive for them and exemplify them even now.

Summary
So here we have six focal images which help us focus our reading and understanding of Scripture: Creation, Covenant, Exodus, Cross, Community, and Coming Kingdom. Taken together with the fullness of Scripture (in all the modes it speaks), tradition and the Vincentian Canon, and the Church as the Spirit-filled community, these focal images move the discussion beyond our own cultural stories, beyond our nationalism, beyond our narrow self-interest, toward faithfulness and obedience to God in moral matters. These are the things that will renew our minds so that we are not conformed to this world but transformed into the likeness of Christ.

Politics and the Kingdom of God

Fr. John A. Roop

Session One: The Nature of the Problem

The Lord be with you.
And with your spirit.
Let us pray.

O God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, our only Savior, the Prince of Peace: Give us grace to take to heart the grave dangers we are in through our many divisions. Deliver your Church from all enmity and prejudice, and everything that hinders us from godly union. As there is one Body and one Spirit, one hope of our calling, one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of us all, so make us all to be of one heart and of one mind, united in one holy bond of truth and peace, of faith and love, that with one voice we may give you praise; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God in everlasting glory. Amen (BCP 2019, pp. 646-647).

Introduction

Over the next seven weeks we are going to explore Politics in the Kingdom of God, which is a clear violation of the old adage about the two things you must never discuss in polite company — religion and politics. And some might consider it an intersection, or collision, of two sphere that should remain separate: church and state, faith and politics. But, that won’t do. Christianity is by nature political because it is about the creation of a polis — a place, a city, a kingdom and the people who dwell in it — both of whom, place and people, embody the just and righteous rule of God. That’s not really controversial among Christians, is it? We pray for it each day in the Lord’s Prayer. And yet, discussions about politics and the Kingdom of God are fraught with tension, and often produce more heat than light. Why is that?

• Why is it so difficult to talk with one another – peaceably – about political issues, which are often really moral/ethical issues lived out in the public sphere? Why is it so difficult to bring together the Kingdom of God and the politics of man, not least to do so in the church?

• Why is it so difficult to find and agree on what the Kingdom of God looks like in the very practical matters of the political and social landscape?

Political issues are at their heart moral and ethical issues. For example, a Christian cannot deal with immigration — a hot topic political issue — without facing Jesus’ summary of the Law, the command to love our neighbors as ourselves, and the Parable of the Good Samaritan which tells us who our neighbor is. We cannot address war in Ukraine and Gaza — or anywhere — without first bending the knee to Jesus the Prince of Peace. We cannot address the politics of climate change without engaging creational theology. We cannot rightly vote so long as the blood of partisanship is thicker than the water of baptism. So, we have to deal with moral/ethical issues — faith issues — as we approach politics. That means we must and will consider:

• the sources of Christian moral/ethical authority (where we look for answers)

• the methods of appealing to those authorities (how we rightly understand them)

• the application of the Church’s understanding of the sources of authority to the pressing, practical affairs of life in the public sector

You may hear things that challenge you, that make you uncomfortable – things you may initially (and even finally) disagree with. We will not always agree on these complex issues. That is not what we should expect or hope for from this class. Here are the real goals:

• to promote the ability to discuss complex moral and political issues in the Christian community — in this parish — without rancor or division

• to encourage commitment to the Christian moral worldview

• to provide tools and resources for thinking through these moral and political issues Christianly

If we can do this, that is a significant accomplishment.

Just a note about format. I have quite a bit of information to present, but I also want to foster focused discussion. But, frankly, in this arena, it is very easy for discussion to veer off on all sorts of interesting but unfocused tangents. So, please don’t be offended if, in our discussions, I pull us back to the main topic. Please join in; part of our purpose is to learn to talk with one another as brothers and sisters in Christ when we disagree. But, respecting the limits of time, we will need to remain focused on the matter at hand.

The Nature of the Problem
If you live in Maryville, the chances are good that you are white, Republican, Protestant, educated, employed, and active in (addicted to) sports – particularly to Maryville High School football. Each Friday night home game, the football stadium – complete with blinding lights, artificial turf, and a jumbotron – is packed to overflowing and the surrounding streets are clogged with parked cars. It’s a fun place to be, but an intense place; people take their football very seriously – particularly the rivalry between Maryville and Alcoa. Both schools have outstanding programs, players, coaches, and records. Both communities come out in force for this rivalry game.

A few years ago, while I was still teaching at Maryville High School, ESPN offered to highlight this rivalry by broadcasting the game between Maryville and Alcoa: a big deal for both cities and schools. There was only one catch; ESPN wanted the game played and broadcast live on Sunday morning during prime time church hours. Now, the community found two of its deeply held values – faith and football – in tension, in conflict with one another. There was much public deliberation and hand-wringing as the administrators, coaches, pastors, and parents appeared to wrestle with this dilemma. For those of us who had been at Maryville for any length of time at all, this was good theater but nothing more; the outcome was a foregone conclusion: nothing trumps Maryville High School football. And, indeed, the decision was finally made to play and broadcast the game on Sunday. But what to do about the conflict with church attendance, with the exercise of faith? Many of the area churches held one-off Saturday evening services by way of compromise. Or was it by way of capitulation and accommodation to the sports culture? It depends on your viewpoint.

Suppose you had been the parent of a player or the pastor of a church or the administrator of a school? What would you have decided? As a parent, would you have let your child play? As a pastor, would you have accommodated the decision by holding a special, one-off Saturday evening service? As a member of the community, would you have attended the game and supported the schools’ decision or would you gone to church as usual? Upon what would you have based your decisions? There was a clash of values happening there on many levels, and playing out on a very public stage. It is not a stretch to see that as a moral/ethical issue because it deals with deeply held values. To the school board members it was also certainly a political matter. It may seem like a minor issue, but I still wonder if it really was minor.

The determination of whether this actually is a moral issue and, if so, whether it is trivial and easily decided or more complex and fraught, is itself part of the moral discussion and context. Determining whether an issue contains a moral element itself depends upon a certain understanding of morals and a framework for making moral decisions. How do we know? How do we decide? What informs us?

In the run-up to the 2016 presidential election — the contest between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump — I was – here I struggle for the right word: Concerned? Worried? Terrified? – that some of you might come to me as a new priest to ask for pastoral guidance in making the complex political and moral decision of which candidate to support. Both candidates had some good ideas and both had some very bad ones. Both candidates were deeply flawed and morally compromised. Neither candidate was running on the Kingdom of God platform. So I prayed and I thought and I read and I worried.

You can imagine my relief in the aftermath of the election; no one – not one single person – asked for my pastoral guidance in my vocation as priest. The same held true for the 2020 election. Some of my friends and family wanted to know what I thought, but only as a citizen. No one seemed to care what I thought as a priest and as a student of Scripture. Yes, I was greatly relieved by that…but only for a brief time. Then the questions started:

Why did no one seek pastoral counsel from me on this issue?

Was it just me (my personal insecurity showing) or were all priests deemed irrelevant in this matter (my vocational insecurity showing)?

Had the Church really nothing of value to say on that matter, or was it simply that we have actually accepted as appropriate the strange notion of the separation of church and state?

Has the Church given the impression – unintentionally or otherwise – that some issues are simply off the table for discussion, somehow inappropriate, perhaps too divisive?

If people are not making moral — and, yes, political — decisions in the context of the church and the people of God, with the pastoral guidance of the church, how are people making such decisions? Around that time, a dear friend sent me a G. K. Chesterton quote:

I do not need the church to tell me I am wrong when I know I am wrong. I need a church to tell me I am wrong when I think I am right.

If not the church, then who? If not in the community of God’s people, then where?

If the Church is relevant and has truth to speak to moral issues, then how do we bring moral decision-making back into the context of the Christian community – where it belongs – and equip people to think Christianly and ethically?

The Maryville-Alcoa game was (perhaps) a trivial example of moral questions; the presidential election was more substantive. There are many other issues that are generally – though not universally – recognized as moral/ethical matters, and political issues, as well – weighty matters: abortion; homosexuality, transsexuality and gender identity, wokeness in all its manifestations; same-sex marriage; racism and sexism; capital punishment; euthanasia and end of life issues; redemptive violence (just war, self-defense, armed protection of others); immigration; social welfare, and now artificial intelligence. The list goes on. My conviction is that God cares deeply about these matters, that they are Kingdom of God matters, and that he has equipped his Church to deal with them effectively. And, it is not my conviction only; it is the conviction of Scripture and the Tradition of the Church. My further conviction is that we have an enemy who is the father of lies and deception and discord, and that he will use these same issues to confuse and neutralize the witness of the church and to divide and conquer the church, if possible.

To avoid such confusion and devision, it is good to focus first not on what divides us, but on what unites us, with a re-commitment to those unitive essentials. The collect that I began with reminds us that we share in common one Body, one Spirit, one hope of our calling, one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of us all. Just a walk through the bulletin highlights these essentials for us each week.

• The Acclamation

• The Prayer of Preparation: The heart is but a small vessel, yet there are lions; there are poisonous beasts and all the treasures of evil. And there are rough uneven roads; there are precipices. But there also is God, also the angels, the life and the kingdom, the light and the Apostles, the treasures of grace — there all all things (St. Macarius the Great, Fifty Spiritual Homilies).

• The Summary of the Law: The Great Commandment

• Scripture

• The Creed

• The Confession

• The Eucharist

• Post Communion Prayer: Mission

Paul writes this to the Church at Ephesus:

I therefore a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit – just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call – one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all (Eph 4:1-6, ESV throughout).

This is what unites us. With all of this to unite us, why are we still so often divided by moral/ethical issues, by political/social issues?

Perhaps more than any other New Testament writer, Paul was concerned with unity in the Church. He writes this in Romans:

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect (Rom 12:1-2).

The essence of error, the essence of discord is this: we have been conformed to this world and we need to be transformed by the renewing of our minds.

Let’s begin with this: we are – all of us – children of the Fall. With a gracious nod toward our very Reformed brothers and sisters, that means that we are all subject to total depravity: not that we are as bad as we can possibly be – completely evil – but rather that we have been adversely affected by the fall in every part of our being – body, soul, and spirit. Our bodies are clearly subject to aging, sickness, and death. But, perhaps even more relevant, our bodily needs have become disordered bodily demands/passions. We need to eat, but we don’t need a continual feast while much of the rest of the world goes hungry. We need clothing, but, really, $1000 jeans? Our species needs sex to procreate, but not lust and perversity. Our souls – our will, our conscience, our emotions, our thinking – have become disordered. We listen to our “gut” – we act without thought – when we should listen to our renewed mind. Even if we engaged our minds our thinking has been so conditioned by the fallen world and its cultures that it no longer reasons as God reasons. The Second Song of Isaiah (Is 55:6-11) expresses this dark truth poetically. [Read Quaerite Dominum, BCP 2019 , p. 82.]

Our consciences have been de-calibrated, misdirected so that they no longer point toward true moral north. Our wills are weak. Our spirits, that part of man that can know God directly and can be in-dwelt by the Holy Spirit are dead, unless they have been born again in baptism. Man – apart from God – is totally depraved. And the corporate and individual effects of the Fall linger after baptism. The process of renewal into the true image-bearers of God is long and difficult. This class is one more step in that direction.

Not only are we children of the Fall, we are also the products of cultural and personal stories that stand as rivals to the Gospel. We are all formed by the stories we hear, by the stories we inhabit; they shape us in thought, word, and deed in ways large and small, in ways we don’t even notice, just as we never notice the air we walk through and breathe. Sometimes air becomes polluted and even toxic; sometimes our stories do too. This class will invite (challenge) you to examine your stories, to see how they have formed you, and in many cases deformed you. And it will challenge you to listen closely – with a view toward ethics and politics – to the Christian story, which is, in very many cases, quite different from our personal stories and from the prevailing cultural stories. Start with the most salient points of your identity, because each of those carries with it a story that has formed you. I’ll use myself as an example; you may well identify with several of my stories; some of yours may well be different. Consider how these might shape my moral understanding/leanings.

• White (I experienced the great civil rights movements of the 1960s and the transition from segregated to integrated schools.)

• Western

• 20^th Century: Enlightenment, Modernism, Post-Modernism

• Affluent by global standards and middle-class by American standards

• Educated

• American

• Southern Appalachian

• Knoxvillian

• Product of a two-parent, working class family (nominally Democratic, definitely union)

• Husband and father

• Retired engineer and teacher

• Anglican Priest

We could go on, but perhaps the point is clear. I have been shaped by all these factors/stories in ways that are not always obvious to me, and certainly not obvious without reflection. And they have shaped my moral and political worldviews in ways that do not always align with the Christian moral and political worldview. The trouble is, I make moral/ethical judgments reflexively/automatically, based, without much thought, upon the stories that have formed me. My judgments feel right, because they accord with the stories that have formed me. Challenge my stories and you challenge me, my identity, and I get defensive. This is why we have conflicts and divisions over moral/ethical/political matters. But this is just what the Gospel does; it challenges me and my stories, you and your stories. It demands and creates a new identity by incorporating us into a different, larger, true story. That is key: we must not let any of these other stories take priority over the Gospel story. We cannot let the blood of ethnicity or party or family or cause or anything else run deeper than the water of baptism. And that transition between stories, that absolute commitment to the Gospel and our baptismal identity isn’t easy. It will be accomplished bit-by-bit through the transformative power of the Holy Spirit. Remember what St. Paul wrote:

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect (Rom 12:1-2).

Our minds must be renewed, and we must learn to test and to discern what is the true will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. That is the challenge ahead of us. And, it is not an easy challenge; it is a battle. In 2 Corinthians Paul writes:

For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ (2 Cor 10:3-5).

Did you get that last part? “We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ.” Usually the arguments that must be destroyed and the lofty opinions raised against the knowledge of God are our own – the results of our fallen nature and our rival stories. The thoughts that must be taken captive to obey Christ are our own. Next week we will begin to look at how to do just that, how we take these thoughts captive.