Common Good

Review: In Search of the Common Good

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In search of the common good

In Search of the Common Good: Christian Fidelity in a Fractured World. Jake Meador. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2019.

Summary: Observing the breakdown in community in both church and society, the author traces the root causes, and the practices of Christian community that can lead to recovery of community and a church that seeks the common good in society.

Many attentive culture watchers have noted the parallel declines of both church and wider American culture. Attendance is dropping in many churches even as churches are rocked with scandals of sexual abuse and financial mismanagement. The seduction of the church to corrupt political alliances, whether of the left or the right, in the author’s view, is only the final step in a church that has given itself to power instead of the doing of “small things with great love.” While all this goes on, America is “bowling alone” to even a greater extend than when Robert Putnam first published his study of the decline of social capital and community in America. Suicide rates are up, life expectancy is dropping, and the professionalized care industry is booming, even as local community and a sense of cohesion and pursuit of common good is vanishing in a land of toxic discourse.

Jake Meador chronicles these parallel declines and traces them to three factors. One is a loss of meaning, a pervasive existentialism that pretends to meaning in choices of radical freedom, yet without hope. A second is a loss of wonder, a dis-enchantment with the world as the buffered self cuts us off from both danger and wonder, resulting pervasive boredom. A third is the hollowing out of work, where efficiency and profitability is the sum total of work’s meaning, where we are alienated both from our work, and by our work from home, family, and religious life, as work becomes all-consuming.

Meador proposes three practices that may play a crucial role in restoring Christian communities to health, enabling them to exercise a societal presence that fosters a wider common good. He begins with the surprising proposal of keeping sabbath, as a tangible way of underscoring that human beings were made, not for work, but for God, that we are human beings, not human doings. One of the things Meador argues for is corporate worship, as one tangible way of keeping sabbath that begins to restore a sense of our being part of some “common good.” He adopts Wendell Berry’s idea of “membership” in which we recognize that we are embedded in both a human and wider biological community.  He advocates for work that is sacramental–that work is good and offers ways to bless others, that produces wealth, and is attentive to the membership.

His final section consists of two parts. The latter grounds the former, and really all that he has written, in the new heaven and new earth, a hope that is even more real than life in the present age. The former talks about what it means for the community of God’s people to be citizens in earthly societies. It is here perhaps that he makes one of his most trenchant observations:

   Put another way, the political priorities of many American Christians in recent years have been precisely backward. We ought to have begun with doctrine because doctrine defines the good life as it relates to political systems and societies. Then we ought to have turned to the formation of citizens. We should have asked what kind of virtues are necessary to live well in community with one another and what particular virtues are necessary for responsible political action. Then we should have asked how to cultivate those virtues within our people. Finally, only after attending to these issues, we should have moved on to debating policy….American Christians, and evangelicals especially, have done the exact opposite. (p. 161).

He argues for a political doctrine shaped by the Kuyperian ideas of solidarity and sphere sovereignty, and the practice of subsidiarity–that government should only do those things it is large enough to do, leaving other matters to other spheres of life.

Reading Jake Meador as a sixty-something took me back to what it was like to read as a college student a young Os Guinness in The Dust of Death, with his sweeping discussion of culture, and what it meant for Christians to live as a third way. There is the same scope of considering cultural forces, the intellectual ideas behind them, and a fresh vision of what Christian faithfulness might look like in the present time. Sadly, a boomer generation fascinated with “fast-everything” circumvented doctrine and virtue and communal practices in pursuit of policy influence, power, or a personal prosperity without a sense of our membership and solidarity with others and all living things.

This leaves me reflecting. Os Guinness is still speaking and writing. Jake Meador has written for a number of publications. But who is reading? And who is heeding? I hope someone is and that the American church wakes up to how far it has declined over forty years, before all we can do is cry “Ichabod. The glory has departed!” (1 Samuel 4:21). Meador’s ideas and commended practices offer light for those tired of groping in the darkness.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: Reading for the Common Good

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Reading for the Common Good

Reading for the Common Good, C. Christopher Smith. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2016.

Summary: Explores how the communal practice of reading in congregations fosters a learning community and shared social imagination the results in clearer congregational identity, sense of mission in one’s setting, and wider engagement with the environment, economics, and political order.

I came across the work of C. Christopher Smith a few years ago through an online version of The Englewood Review of Books. The online site has become one of my “go-to” places to learn about new releases and also great books available for discounts (usually in e-format). Smith is the editor of this enterprise which is tied in with the ministry of Englewood Christian Church in Indianapolis, an urban congregation on the east side of Indianapolis. In his previous book, Slow Church, which I reviewed a year ago, Smith offered a few more clues that books were not just a personal passion that his church indulges but that reading plays a role in its common life. In this book, Smith articulates a vision for reading that goes beyond personal or even common life to the common good of his congregation and wider community.

Fundamentally, he and his community have fostered the idea of becoming a learning organization, building on Peter Senge’s idea in The Fifth Discipline. Learning to read together, beginning with the scriptures both in preaching and the practice of lectio divina, and discussing other works together has helped his church understand its context as well as envision a different “social imaginary.” This is a key idea in the book, borrowed from the work of Charles Taylor. Social imaginaries are our mental images of how things are done in our social context, often not articulated nor evaluated. For example, it might be contended that we have accustomed ourselves to a very polarized political dialogue between two parties. And we may think we must choose one of the two alternatives, both individually, and communally as congregations or church bodies. A different social imaginary might envision a very different type of political engagement.

Smith contends that as we read, reflect, discuss and imagine together around the scriptures, and around books that may speak to our context, we can explore, and be confronted by different social imaginaries that change the way we think about who and why we are as a church, about when and where we are in our context, and how we think about our presence in our communities, in the physical environment we inhabit, in the economic order in which we participate, and the political order of our communities, states and nations.

I had two questions in mind as I was reading this book. One was, can you really hope for all this to happen from our reading of scripture and other good reading? The other was, how does he get his congregation to do this kind of reading together? The answer to the first question was simple. I found myself asking, “isn’t this in fact why I do Bob on Books in the first place?”  I believe that not only the “book of all books” but also other good writing can change the way we see the world and our place in it and shape our actions in ways that seek the greater flourish of the people and the places we share life with. What Smith did here is give me better language for what, instinctively, I’ve sought to do on the blog, both in my own writing and my reviews of the writing of others.

Chapter 9 in the book helped answer the second question for me. As noted already, Smith and his community begin with the slow reading of scripture, and he believes that learning to attend to God’s word in these ways is both foundational and helpful in learning, and loving to attend to other words. Congregational leaders promote reading within various teams related to the particular work they are doing. Their goals are modest. Even one book read and discussed together in a year is good. They create spaces for conversations about reading in classes, book clubs and seminars. They make resources available including books related to a current sermon series, they develop a process for including reviews of books on websites and a process to curate those reviews. And they keep fostering the love of reading among the children of the congregation. I read this and was struck with the conclusion that even in a busy congregation (whose isn’t?) of people who don’t read much, this is doable.

Smith concludes the book with a couple of reading lists: an annotated one of books related to the chapters of the book, and a list organized by subjects of books that have been helpful to his church community. My impression was “meaty, but accessible” for both lists–plainly richer fare that the inspirational fiction and non-fiction that is the typical “Christian reading diet.”

It is refreshing when a book comes along that connects the dots and clarifies one’s understanding of the things one cares about. This was such a book, and in doing so, the book accomplished for me, or rather in me, what the author contends reading does for us. I concluded the book with fresh ideas about fostering learning community around books in the professional and church communities with which I connect. Hopefully, that will indeed lead to some “common goods.”

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: Christians and the Common Good

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Christians and the Common GoodChristians and the Common Good, Charles E. Gutenson. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2011.

Summary: Explores what the teaching of scripture says about God’s intentions for how we live together and the implications of this for public policy.

The title of this book may be perplexing to some for different reasons. For some, their experience is one of Christians seeking their own good, or simply their own idea of the good, which smacks of privilege. For others, the perplexing thing may be the idea of a “common good”. In our current climate of polarized, indeed Balkanized politics, it seems that few people are talking about a “common good”–policies and community practices where both responsibility and benefit are shared by all constituents to a significant degree.

Charles Gutenson, in a book written during the debates on the Affordable Care Act proposes an approach by which Christians may advance proposals informed by their faith that genuinely advance the common good, not just their own. He argues that one gets there by reading the whole Bible to discover God’s intentions for how a people are to live together, not simply the few “government passages” (Romans 13 and Luke 20 in particular) that Christians often reference as the beginning and end of their political philosophy. He contends that this teaching is not to be woodenly applied in a context very different from the biblical one. And he proposes that the life and ministry of Jesus is the definitive expression of how the Triune God would have us live in imitation of him.

He follows these foundational claims with an extensive survey of scriptures from both the Old and New Testament concerning everything from Jubilee and gleaning laws to the continued protection of widows and orphans in the life of the church. A basic thread is a loving concern for the needy among us. It seemed to me that 2 Corinthians 8:13-15 was a particular “control text” for the approach he advocates:

“Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality. At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. The goal is equality, as it is written: ‘The one who gathered much did not have too much, and the one who gathered little did not have too little.’ ” (NIV)

He contends that it is not enough that the church act along these lines but that this is also a good principle to inform public policy. Often, he argues, private means are simply not sufficient to address the scope of public need, as important as private efforts are.

With this in mind, he thinks the following policies are in line with a biblically-informed concern for the common good: safety nets like unemployment, certain forms of welfare and Medicaid, a progressive (rather than regressive) tax structure, an honest reckoning with the issues of race and protections from racial discrimination, Social Security and Medicare safeguards to care for our elderly, minimum wages that provide a living wage, or absent that, tax breaks that recognize the benefits others enjoy by keeping wages low, earned income credits, access to health care, estate and inheritance taxes, bankruptcy laws, anti-monopoly laws, efforts to strengthen families, and addressing global poverty.

Clearly, Gutenson advocates what would be a “left of center” social policy and he admits as much. He takes a muted approach to the “culture war” issues of homosexuality and abortion. The strength of his case is the argument that a flourishing society seeks the flourishing of all, and not just some, of its people. It looks out not only for one’s own interests but also the interests of others (Philippians 2:4). It recognizes the role that the public power of government may play when the private power of some interests gains benefits at the expense of others, especially those on the margins.

What troubles me is that while the author welcomes more conservative voices and recognizes that solutions to our pressing social problems will require a degree of collaboration absent at present, he is decidedly silent on some issues that I think require attention, such as the recognition of the deep injustice we commit against our children when we consistently ask the government to spend more for the services we want than we are willing to pay, leaving the debts to those who come after us. Also, redistribution of resources via taxation can help or hurt the poor. Why not for example provide tax incentives to companies who offer living rather than minimum wages? I’m troubled that some of these proposals go beyond emergency relief (such as unemployment benefits) to ongoing relief rather than economic opportunity fueled by economic development.

Nor does he say anything about fundamental electoral reform including re-districting reform and campaign finance reform. As it stands now, most elected officials in state and federal government do not have to be concerned about “the common good” because of the way their districts are drawn. And this further marginalizes people by race and economic status. The rich are basically able to buy their office, or that of those who protect their interests.

Where Gutenson’s voice is welcome is in its clarion call for Christians to pursue the common good, and to wrestle with the “whole counsel of God” on these matters to gain God’s heart for the common, and not just our own good. This can be helpful for thoughtful Christians wrestling with the role of Christians in public life, who want to go beyond proof texts and political pundits to constructive engagement.

 

I’ve No Plans to Move to Canada

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Flag_of_Canada.svgThis is not a statement about Canada, which I’ve always loved visiting. I have good friends who make their home there, and they love their country as much or more than I love mine. No anti-Canada rant here. No rant at all really.

Rather, it is a response to the number of posts I’ve seen recently saying, “if ‘______’ is elected president, I’m moving to Canada!” Depending on your politics, you might be inclined to say this for a various of the candidates currently on offer.

Now I suspect that some of this is overstated hyperbole, or just a form of venting frustration with what seems a bizarre political season to many. But I also wonder if it reveals some unsettling, at least to me, suppositions about the political order.

It seems that the assumption behind statements like the one above is that if such and such is elected the nation is going to go to hell in a hand-basket. Now I will totally agree that it is not an inconsequential thing to elect a president, or any other political office holder. I grew up in a city that was more or less a one party town and often elected those beholden to organized crime. And I live in a city, that while far from perfect, has enjoyed several generations of forward looking leadership.

What troubles me in the sentiment is that I feel it puts too much stock in a single area of our public life–the political. It seems that our discourse tends to turn the politicians we like into saviors, and those we don’t into demons. It’s kind of striking to me that believers and atheists both have something in common in this discourse–they talk about politicians as supernatural, or at least as super-human figures. At very least, it seems that something is out of proportion here. A few observations:

  • Under our system, political leaders derive their power from the governed. Even with the problems of campaign finance, we are still the people who put these people in office, or not.
  • At every level, we operate in a system that balances power between executive, legislative, and judicial functions. It’s inefficient, but it does provide mechanisms to check the excesses of a person or group.
  • I also wonder if we put too much stock in these people, perhaps in part because of the way the 24/7 news cycle distorts our view of reality. So many others are pursuing the common good, whether in starting companies, serving communities, creating works of beauty, and, of vital importance, raising the next generation.
  • One of the things this points to is that what makes a country good are not simply our leaders, but an engaged citizenry that is thinking not only of our own good but the common good. This raises the all-important issue of our character as a people, as David Brooks has so helpfully done on his “Road to Character” website.

This is why I’m not planning to move to Canada, or elsewhere. There is so much I love about the city, state, and nation I live in. I will not give away my own responsibility for fostering what is best about these to the political system. Nor will I lodge my hope in any political leader, nor allow their failings to dissuade me from seeking the common good of “the land that I love.”

This post actually began in church this past Sunday. We were singing these lyrics by Chris Tomlin:

You’re the God of this city
You’re the King of these people
You’re the Lord of this nation

What is disturbing to me is that many of those I’ve heard voicing sentiments about going to Canada are people of faith, and I suspect many have sung this song at some point. What I wonder is, do they believe God will still be sovereign over our nation if the person they disdain is elected? Some may chide me for making too much of a “careless” statement. But I wonder about our “care” for our city, state, and nation if we would talk about leaving it if someone we disapprove of is elected. What are we saying about our faith in God and our love for our place?

Something to think about. . .

Outrage and the Speech of Freedom

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By David Shankbone – David Shankbone CC BY – SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3554956

“Why are we so angry?”

That’s a question I’ve been musing on of late.

My Facebook friends are a curious phenomena of my life. I find some expressing outrage against anything that might be associated with the political left. And then there are others equally outraged with anything associated with the political right. It makes me kind of glad that they only meet on my newsfeed! It also makes me wonder what it says about me that I have friends at both these extremes.

Some suggest that outrage with the political establishment explains the attraction of people to Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Whether or not these are the best candidates for president, it concerns me that outrage might outweigh more measured judgments of who should serve in this important office.

I come back to my question of “why are we so angry?”

Outrage is defined as “an extremely strong reaction of anger, shock, or indignation.” I wonder what feeds the anger that shows up in road rage, gun violence, and the vitriolic discourse that increasingly seems to be the social and popular media norm.

I do wonder at time about the capacity of our media to ratchet up our anger as one angry voice augments another, with media personalities egging this on because it means more views to a blog, a talk show, or “news” program. One study suggests that “anger is the internet’s most powerful emotion.”

Could this be one reason why we are so angry?

While expressions of outrage may well be protected free speech, I do wonder whether any of this promotes what I call the speech of freedom–the speech whose aim is to promote the common good of both speaker and those with whom they disagree. It seems to me that all outrage does is solidify my bond with those who share my anger while alienating me further from any who see things differently.

Maybe that’s what some of us want. But I kind of wonder how healthy a community is that is formed around anger. And I think we have to ask ourselves whether we really want to keep fostering the antagonisms that our media seem bent on ratcheting up. Do we really want a world that is divided into winners and losers, a zero sum game? There are many parts of the world that operate like that. By and large, they are brutal, vengeful places where victory and tragedy are never far apart.

Can anger ever be useful? The apostle Paul once wrote, “be angry but do not sin, do not let the sun set on your anger.” I’ve come to realize that anger is a sign, and to ask what that is a sign of, and to act quickly to address the source of my anger. Sometimes, it is simply that a selfish desire has been frustrated, and it may be useful to hold up the mirror and see what this is showing me about myself.

Sometimes, we are angry because of some injustice or grievance that breaks a relationship. I can stew and build resentment, or I can go, before the sun sets, and say, “we need to talk, because this endangers our relationship.” It’s not always possible to work out differences in a day–the issue is not letting them fester. There is an incredible freedom that comes when anger turns to forgiveness and reconciliation.

What about social media and other things that ratchet up anger? I wonder if it is really worthwhile giving attention to these things. What if we took the time we spent posting and reading angry rants to writing a letter to our political representatives on something we care about? What about spending the time volunteering in something we care about? What about having a conversation with a living person with a different point of view–face to face! And for people of faith, what about taking the time we would spend reading and writing things against a person to pray for them. Praying for those in public leadership is commanded in the Bible–attacking them in social media is not!

All these may be ways to turn anger into the speech of freedom.

I began this post with the question of “why are we so angry?” There is a slight twist to that question in the story of Jonah, when Jonah is pouting because God spared the powerful city of Nineveh. God asks Jonah, “do you do well to be angry?”

Do I do well to be angry? Do you?

Review: Visions of Vocation

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The main thesis of this book is that to live as a called person is to be implicated in what one knows, to have a sense of responsibility that flows out of understanding the world and our place and work in it.

Steven Garber writes this book out of a lifetime experience of helping people discern the calling of God in their everyday lives. He has particularly worked in recent years among young leaders who come to Washington, DC on various internships as the principal of The Washington Institute for Faith, Vocation & Culture. Much of this book is a weave of thinking about vocation and stories of calling culled from the many people he has walked with on this journey.

He begins with talking about what it means to know the world as it is in all its ugliness and love it. Such a love is sacramental and joins with God in his care for the world. Later on, Garber speaks about how those who know and love most deeply also mourn deeply while yet living in hope. Seeing and knowing for a person living attentively to God’s call must eventuate in doing. Yet as he talks about in his chapter “the landscape of our lives”, we live in the midst of a mind- and soul-numbing glut of information that can leave us indifferent to any and everything. He talks about the sobering example of an Eichmann who could read Goethe, listen to Schubert, and plan the destruction of thousands of Jews and somehow see himself not implicated in their deaths.

Perhaps the only remedy, Garber thinks, is to “come and see” afresh the incarnate Christ, the Word become Flesh. The coming of Jesus tells us that words have to become flesh and have to be lived out in our actions in the physical world. He then gives us narratives of friends who have done this in fields as diverse as cattle ranching to health care in indigent communities. He tells of Kwang Kim, who starts asking as a student “what should the world be like” and “what should I be doing” and has translated that into decades of work in the World Bank shaping development plans that are sustainable for loan recipients and not just profitable for the bank.

The latter part of the book explores the dangers of cynicism and the necessity of realizing that all of our efforts to live out our callings will be proximate rather than perfect. We realize that we live between the already and the not yet of the kingdom and do what we can rather than what we cannot. He concludes with the story of his father whose life brought him joy and was contrasted with the high-roller with whom he was a seatmate on a flight and was stopped in his boastful tracks by the simple question of whether any of this had brought him happiness. We are left to conclude that only the life lived attending to the call of God to love the world for the good of the world can bring a deep sense of joy and satisfaction with one’s life. Garber’s book both leaves us wanting that and points the way.