One of the major addresses at the Witherspoon Luncheon during the 2001
General Assembly was given by the Rev. Dr. Jane
Dempsey Douglass, professor emerita of Princeton Theological Seminary
and former president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches.
She has graciously provided us with the full text of
her talk, and we are delighted to share it here as a significant
contribution to our church's thinking about our mission in the 21st
century.
Mission Essentials
for the Twenty-first Century:
Beyond Conflict over
Sexuality
Witherspoon Society Luncheon
General Assembly
Louisville June 10, 2001
Jane Dempsey Douglass
Affirming our Christian freedom
I have been asked to identify issues on which our
church should focus attention once the immediately pressing struggle
over sexuality is resolved, beginning this week, in favor of justice for
all the baptized within our church's life.
At the center of my reflections is the importance of
holding fast to Christian freedom as the context in which theological
work is done and in which Christians live out their faith. Galatians 5
tells us: "For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm,
therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. ... For you
were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your
freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love serve
one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment,
`You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'"
Reformed people especially have appropriated this
message that Christian freedom, so close to the heart of the Gospel, is
a precious gift of Christ's redeeming work. Calvin frames his basic
understanding of Christian freedom as emancipation into freedom through
the liberality of God's work in the incarnation for those who have been
oppressed by bondage and wearied by anxiety of conscience. Three
critical aspects of this freedom are justification by grace alone,
liberation of consciences from ecclesiastical legalism where human laws
are confused with God's laws, and freedom for grateful and willing
service to God and to the neighbor.
At the beginning of the twenty-first century we give
thanks for our Christian freedom in the church: freedom to resist
repressive pressures within our church; freedom to reject ways of
reading Scripture which once justified slavery, women's subordination,
the inferiority of certain races and ethnic groups, and the inherent
sinfulness of gay and lesbian relationships; freedom to affirm the
living Word of God as a liberating power for wholeness of life; freedom
to build bonds of community with our brothers and sisters across divides
in our own church, across denominations and across the globe. Even so,
we must decide exactly how to live in Christian freedom, serving those
sisters and brothers in love.
The immediately urgent task for this General Assembly
is to remove from the Book of Order or radically revise the
notorious paragraph G-6.0106 which impedes the freedom of gay and
lesbian members of our church. I am hopeful that this action will be
taken now, but we will not stop working until it has been taken.
We need also to change the climate of our church which
impedes the freedom of women. Repeated attacks on the program of Women's
Ministries seem designed to intimidate and to silence women's voices.
Moreover, our constitution's provision that women as well as men will
serve in leadership is not yet fully implemented. As of last October,
172 congregations, from 71 of 173 presbyteries, report no female elders
or deacons. Clearly there is an educational task before us which
requires a ministry rooted in Christian freedom.
An African Presbyterian woman has come to exemplify
for me what it means to live and minister in Christian freedom. She told
me that she had been imprisoned for some months during the era of the
President-for-Life Banda in Malawi. When I asked her why this happened,
she replied that she did not know exactly. She was on her way to work as
a nurse one morning when the police picked her up and took her to jail.
She asked why, but they never told her. But, she said very
matter-of-factly, "I think it had to do with my preaching. I am an
elder, and I was responsible for the worship service at a small
congregation each Sunday. You know, it's impossible to preach the whole
gospel without saying something that will offend a dictator! When I got
to prison, I understood. God had a new ministry for me. I found
political prisoners who had been there so long they had lost hope! I was
given a ministry of hope, and there was plenty to do till I was
released."
Empowerment for freedom through
memory, vision, and the gifts of faith, hope and love.
If we are to live in this kind of Christian freedom,
we will need mission essentials: memory, a vision of God's future, and
the empowering gifts of faith, hope, and love. We will remember that our
ancestors were slaves in Egypt, freed by God to live according to God's
will. We will remember that Jesus of Nazareth announced the reign of
God, ate with sinners, healed the hemorrhaging woman who broke the
purity taboos by touching his robe, was put to death unjustly and rose
again to conquer sin and death. We who are baptized into Christ's death
and resurrection will be drawn into the future with a vision of the
reign of God already partly mirrored in the church. We are called as a
church to model for the world the new creation in the Spirit where the
old patriarchal orders of creation are superseded, where justice and
peace shape a new community where all are welcome. Faith, hope, and love
are gifts of the Holy Spirit who accompanies us and gives us strength
and courage. For Reformed people, the church is not the ark by which we
are saved from the world but the community through which we work to
transform the world to make God's reign more visible.
The freedom we have been given by the Holy Spirit is
freedom to live against the grain of culture, both in church and
society, not as self-proclaimed heroes but as though that were normal.
Remember our African nurse, preaching the whole gospel in calm defiance
of a dictator and nurturing hope in an apparently hopeless situation. If
you have seen the film, "Weapons of the Spirit," you will
remember the Huguenots of the French town, Chambon-sur-Lignon, who
rescued enormous numbers of Jews during the second World War. Years
later one of those survivors asked them why they took such grave risks
to shelter Jews who were strangers. They answered as matter-of-factly as
the African nurse, "That was normal." They remembered the
biblical stories of the Jews and sang the Psalms they sang; they
remembered Jesus' teaching about feeding the poor and visiting the
prisoners. They remembered the religious persecution of their own
Huguenot ancestors. So they felt free to do what was
"normal"--if illegal: open their homes to hide and protect
streams of Jewish refugees. They became a community of resistance.
Members and friends of the Witherspoon Society will be
pleased to learn that issues of inclusivity, once considered radical,
are coming to be accepted as normal on the church's agenda in some
circles. Many of you have probably received a Presbyterian seminary
newsletter reporting a survey of its alumni, asking: What do you believe
are the leading issues facing the church today and why? To no one's
surprise, the issue identified by the largest number was sexuality,
followed by biblical authority and interpretation. Then followed
inclusivity and diversity (racially, theologically, and by gender), then
culture and complacency. Out of 19 issues proposed, in terms of
frequency, the last six were: Who is Jesus?, inequalities due to gender
and race, materialism, poverty, individualism.
Inclusiveness grows out of
solidarity, and solidarity demands justice.
How can it be that inclusivity and diversity can be so
close to the top of the list, while inequalities due to gender and race,
materialism, poverty, and individualism come at the bottom? It seems
that it is now important to talk in the church about inclusivity in some
sanitized way, but much less important to deal with the raw issues of
gender, race, and poverty which threaten inclusivity. Grateful as we are
that these last items appear on the list at all, we need to try moving
these items farther up the priority list of issues facing the church in
the eyes of pastors, just as we have challenged the priorities of the
General Assembly Council. The low-rated question, "Who is
Jesus?," may well be the key. If Jesus is the son of a righteous
God, if Christ's reign is marked by justice, there can be no real
inclusiveness in his body, the church, without the hard work of
overcoming barriers of injustice.
John Calvin connects these questions for us with his
themes of a three-fold solidarity. First is the solidarity of Jesus
Christ with humanity in order to redeem humanity. Jesus Christ was flesh
of our flesh and bone of our bones so that we could become the children
of God. Second, there is the solidarity of all Christ's people in the
body of Christ, the church. So powerful are the bonds that unite all who
are baptized into Christ's body that if any of Christ's people is
injured or offended, Christ is injured and offended. Therefore all the
members of Christ's body must care for one another in love. Third is the
solidarity of the whole human family, bound together because all share
the image of God, and they share one flesh, one humanity. The presence
of the image of God in any human being, however sinful or degraded,
creates a moral obligation to aid that person when in need of help.
World Alliance of Reformed Churches
calls for new focus on economic and environmental justice.
In the context of this Reformed vision of solidarity,
I would like to urge a higher place on the church's agenda for a message
about economic and environmental justice sent to our church and to all
the member churches of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches by the
Alliance's last General Council meeting in Debrecen, Hungary in 1997.
This Council brought together the member churches of the Reformed
family, now 217 across the globe, three-fourths of which are found in
the countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. As preparations were
made, the overwhelming question emerging for the agenda was economic
globalization with relation to the injustices it is creating within the
human family and the damage it is doing to the environment.
Our brothers and sisters told us of the increasing
impoverishment their people were experiencing. Around the world the rich
are getting richer, the poor poorer. Footloose financial capital moving
from nation to nation can build up investments in one country, then
suddenly pull out, triggering massive collapse of the economy. In poor
countries with heavy loads of external debt, payments of principal plus
interest stretch out with no end in sight. The requirements of the World
Bank and the IMF that indebted nations make "structural
adjustments" to their national economies have forced them to end
food subsidies for the poor and to make massive cuts in expenditures on
education, transportation, health care and other public services.
This means that parents can no longer pay the school
fees to keep their children in school and can no longer pay the bus to
get to their jobs. Hospitals and clinics no longer have medicines or
x-ray film or surgical supplies. Multinational corporations seeking the
lowest possible manufacturing costs offer some employment in countries
of the South, but working conditions, despite public pressure for
improvement, still too often damage human health and the environment.
Pesticides produced in the USA but declared too toxic to be used here
are exported to the countries of the South to be used by farm workers
who cannot read the warning labels on the packaging. Did you remember as
you came to the Lord's Table this morning that within the communion of
saints were exploited sweatshop workers and hungry children from the
churches of the South who are also members of the body of Christ?
Working for justice is "a
matter of faith."
Reformed people declared in Debrecen that global
economic justice is not just another social issue. It is a matter of
faith. The Alliance General Council said: "We are challenged by the
cry of the people who suffer and by the groaning of creation. We
Christians of Reformed churches are aware of our complicity in an
economic order that is unfair and oppressive, leading to the misery and
death of many people. We participate in attitudes and practices which
erode the foundations of the earth's livelihood. We want to affirm the
gift of life. We consider this affirmation of life, commitment to
resistance, and struggle for transformation to be an integral part of
Reformed faith and confession today. In the past we have called for
status confessionis in cases of blatant racial and cultural
discrimination and genocide [as with apartheid in South Africa]. We now
call for a committed process of progressive recognition, education and
confession (processus confessionis) within all WARC member
churches at all levels regarding economic injustice and ecological
destruction."
Just as in 1982 with apartheid, there is now a need to
unmask the idols, to declare that God is lord of all of human life, and
to become a community of resistance to injustice. Economic life is not
an autonomous and uncontrollable force but an aspect of human life which
must be lived in obedience to God's will for abundant life for all
humanity. Now all churches of the World Alliance --including our own--
are being called to a process of progressive recognition, education and
confession with regard to economic injustice and ecological destruction,
to determine what the churches must do in this situation. To undertake
such a process is fully consistent with our own church's historic
confessions, and especially with our Confession of 1967 and our Brief
Statement of Faith.
The implementing recommendations of the Alliance's
declaration ask the churches, first, to develop an educational process
for congregations to learn about economic life and to "challenge
them to develop a lifestyle which rejects the materialism and
consumerism of our day"; second, "to work towards the
formulation of a confession of their beliefs about economic life which
would express justice in the whole household of God and reflect priority
for the poor, and support an ecologically sustainable future"; and
third, "to act in solidarity with the victims of injustice as they
struggle to overcome unjust economic powers and destructive ecological
activities." This process will include studying the way the
churches themselves use their money and invest it. Churches are asked to
support efforts to improve the way in which international agencies
handle debt, aid, and structural adjustment and to support programs for
debt reduction, like Jubilee 2000.
The year 2000 came and went. Some reduction of
external debt was accomplished for the 41 poorest highly indebted
countries targeted for Jubilee, but not all. The energy raised for the
Jubilee movement has petered out, and public attention has moved on.
Little has been done for the next tier of indebted countries which are
still very poor. Pressure on international agencies has resulted in some
rethinking of loan and aid programs to avoid the heaviest burden falling
on the poorest people and to avoid further environmental degradation in
the development process. Meanwhile hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, and
war have wiped out most of the already minimal infrastructure in some of
the poorest countries: El Salvador, Honduras, Mozambique, Congo, for
example.
Some of WARC's member churches have really responded
to the call of Debrecen with programs of study. For us in the USA, to
enter this process will require acting on our Christian freedom to go
against the grain of our culture. I was discussing this declaration and
other documents on economic justice with a friend who understands the
problems from the standpoint of the developing world. She commented:
"With apologies to Phyllis Trimble, these are texts of terror for
Americans!" But the Witherspoon Society is brave enough to deal
with texts of terror. When I talk with congregations and groups of
pastors about the Debrecen call, most say they have never heard about
it, though Louisville has distributed documents. One pastor commented,
"Economic justice is old hat." Another replied, "Yes, of
course. But the only time anyone has ever walked out on one of my
sermons was when I tried to preach about it."
This is a moment when issues of economic justice,
global relations, and environmental protection are critical issues on
our national agenda. Just this week further strong scientific support
for the reality of global warming and human responsibility for it has
been presented, further evidence that the newly proposed national energy
policy is irresponsible. This is a moment when our American churches
need to engage these questions with seriousness and in solidarity with
our Christian brothers and sisters across the globe, including them as
part of the conversation.
During a WARC consultation in Latin America on the
difficult question of partnership of women and men, a pastor from
Argentina wrote a challenge for the churches of Latin America. It
breathes exuberantly the spirit of Christian freedom and love, of
justice and hope which we have been reflecting upon. I find that it
challenges our church, too, as we struggle to become a community of
resistance to economic injustice. So I close with a brief quotation from
it:
Latino church, woman, wife beloved of Christ,
mother of sons and daughters,
who suffers and struggles,
who cries and bleeds,
but searches for her way
spreading hope.
Do not extinguish your faith
even though your water jar
becomes a cross.
God walks with you,
he is your fountain of life,
your light.
He creates consciousness
where there is unconsciousness;
run, open your mouth,
challenge, provoke.
Do not let anyone trample on your rights:
bread, happiness
justice and a roof.
Shout your truth,
do not keep silent about
what you have received,
look for the path which leads
to a new time.
Approach others with
love in solidarity,
live the truth of God
in your daily activities.
.... Latino church...
from your being flow
winds of peace,
flowers of freedom,
aromas of justice. (1)
1. Rev. Gerardo Oberman in Partnership
in God's Mission in Latin America: Papers and Reports of the
Consultation on Women and Men of Reformed Tradition in Latin America,
Caracas, Venezuela, 20-27 November 1996, ed. Nyambura J. Njoroge
and Páraic Réamonn (Geneva: World Alliance of Reformed Churches,
1998), 67.
