At the General Assembly in Portland, June 18-25, one of the big discussion points will revolve around “social witness.” I cringe when I use this term because I fear that some of you, O Faithful Readers, hear “politics” when someone from the denomination says “social witness.” Alas, I must confess that I would prefer to keep social witness and politics in separate realms for the sake of lowering the temperature of discord within our congregations, yet do I acknowledge that the biblical mandate to “let justice roll down like a river” (Amos 5:24) and to “do justice” (Micah 6:8), in our democratic republic, often necessitates their intimate conversation. With this conversation in mind, I share two perspectives that will be presented in Portland.
One perspective in the conversation about developing social witness policy comes from Chris Iosso of the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy, who wrote a commentary in The Presbyterian Outlook on the Middle East report:
The study team made two Christian theological decisions:First, it would avoid the distraction of devising political solutions, at which diplomats have failed for many years. Second, it would apply universal and explicitly Christian values [and] foster relationships with partners who share its values, be they Jewish, Christian, Muslim, or secular...
To witness to Presbyterian values for a just peace, the report hears the Palestinian Christian call fornonviolent economic pressure for freedom, dignity and a larger role for the UN/ international law.“At the same time,” the report does not absolve Palestinian leadership for “decisions ...that discourage new leadership and ... passivity....”
What I hear in Mr. Iosso’s commentary is a wrestling with what the Christian theologian Reinhold Niebuhr called “Christian Realism,” which is an approach to ethics that seeks to balance the radical idealism of Gospel imperatives with the earthy realities of culture, society and political discourse. That is, how can the Church or the individual Jesus follower best seek justice in a broken and divided world where (a) there are no perfect solutions yet (b) ideals should not be abandoned? Is there a way to balance the need for realism with the call of idealism?
A second perspective in the conversation about developing social witness policy comes from Foothills Presbytery, who has proposed an overture that says, essentially, that the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy take a sabbatical from writing social witness policy for the General Assembly to affirm and instead direct their energies toward writing curriculum that will help congregations and presbyteries engage in ethical study of “both” (“both” is how the Foothills overture reads but I would argue the word “multiple” is more appropriate) sides of a debate. The value of this Foothills overture, as I see it, is that it will deepen in constructive ways the church’s involvement in social witness by helping congregants and pastors wrestle together with ethical insights with which they already agree and insights that may be new to them. In a culture of narrow-casting, where people are fed information predominantly from single source perspectives, such wrestling with multiple perspectives cannot help but deepen and nourish our ethical conversations, for it is in the wrestling with God and one another that we are given a new name (Genesis 32:24-28). The constructive critique of this Foothills overture is that it may diminish the denomination’s prophetic witness by avoiding a single, monolithic word from the highest council of the church. It will be interesting to see what the Assembly does and how the commissioners wrestle with God and one another!
We shall overcome some day,
Brad Munroe
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