Edgework

For much of my early pilgrimage as a Christian, I understood that Christian piety mostly had to do with the interior life of believers preparing for an escape from this sinful world. Of course it also entailed those disciplines that would make them more effective in helping others escape this world with them. But, ever so gradually, I have come to recognize that the vision of the Christian life emerging from the biblical text focuses much more directly on how to live faithfully in the present.

This view does not diminish the value of a vibrant, internal spirituality or the hope for a better future. But it does broaden the embrace of the gospel. N. T. Wright articulates this perspective well in an interview he gave with Christianity Today, January 5, 2007:

For generations the church has been polarized between those who see the main task being the saving of souls for heaven and the nurturing of those souls through the valley of this dark world, on the one hand, and on the other hand those who see the task of improving the lot of human beings and the world, rescuing the poor from their misery. The longer that I have gone on as a New Testament scholar and wrestled with what the early Christians were actually talking about, the more it’s been borne in on me that that distinction is one that we modern Westerners bring to the text rather than finding in the text. Because the great emphasis in the New Testament is that the gospel is not how to escape the world; the gospel is that the crucified and risen Jesus is the Lord of the world.

In his book, The Great Awakening (2008), Jim Wallis notes that the most common biblical support for an exclusive focus on internal piety is Jesus’s statement in John 18:36, “My kingdom is not of this world.” The assumption is that this means God is not concerned about this world but rather on interior and other-worldly matters. Wallis suggests that such a conclusion is not warranted. He notes that Jesus’ kingdom is not “of” this world in the sense that it is not “from” this realm. This is corroborated in the final part of the verse which says, “But now my kingdom is from another place.” Perhaps the Phillips translation says it best with “My kingdom is not founded in this world.”

Understood in this way, says Wallis, “Jesus’ kingdom is not like the other kingdoms of the world, and that’s the point. It’s a different kind of kingdom than the worldly kingdoms based on money, power, violence and sex. The kingdom of God, which Jesus came to inaugurate, is meant to create an alternative reality in this world and, ultimately, to transform the kingdoms of this world” (56).

He then goes on to illustrate how this understanding was part and parcel of much of 19th century evangelicalism. For example, William Wilberforce, a devout Christian contemplating pastoral ministry as a vocation, was persuaded by John Newton, a converted slave-trader turned clergyman, to rather stay in the public square to fight for social justice, especially the abolition of slavery. After a 45-year battle in the British parliament, a bill abolishing slavery was finally passed in 1833, three days before his death.

In hind-sight, one is tempted to wonder how sincere Christians of that day had not rejected the inhumanity of slavery long before Wilberforce arrived on the scene. In discussing this question in his biography of John Newton, Jonathan Aitken says of Newton during his slaving days: “Newton’s lack of moral qualms about the slave trade merely showed that he was a young man of his time and that he accepted the prevailing standards of mid-eighteenth-century England.  It was a harshly materialistic society in which the interests of commerce drowned the voices of conscience” (91). For Wilberforce, the gospel addressed this public moral deficit.

Charles Finney, a 19th century revivalist, always insisted that a true conversion must result in signing up to fight some social evil. He regularly enlisted his converts to join the battle against slavery and for equal education for women and blacks. Wallis notes that, “…church historians tell us that spiritual activity isn’t called revival until it has changed something in society” (27).

If we fast forward to our contemporary 21st century context, we take note that something happened to the evangelical movement in the 20th century. Somewhere along the way, beginning in the liberal/conservative controversies of the 1920s, evangelicals began to define themselves as those attending almost exclusively to interior and otherworldly matters. This vision was supported by the fundamentalist notion that since the world was destined to be destroyed within short order, there was little value in seeking to improve conditions on this temporal, earthly abode.

But, fortunately, there is a new evangelicalism emerging today that is once again fervently committed to a gospel that is both personal and social. Although some evangelicals remain skeptical of this movement, those who are involved are picking up the torch of the likes of Wilberforce, Newton and Finney of the 19th century. Sometimes they feel as though they are 19th century evangelicals born in the wrong century, but they are pressing ahead in a bid to apply the gospel of Christ to a wide range of social issues plaguing our world today, including: poverty, human rights, energy transformation, human trafficking, climate change and the degradation of God’s created world.

For me, my journey has propelled me into both practicing and advocating for what has become known as “creation care.” In some circles within which I move I am still seen as a “misfit.” But Wallis reminds us that “History has taught us that when “misfits” call for the end of the status quo that the rumblings of revival begin” (8).

So I am encouraged to practice Christian piety both in my personal life and in the world all around me.