This , also from A Community of Character brings up a point which follows:
It is my contention, however, that Christian enthusiasm for the political involvement offered by our secular polity has made us forget the church’s more profound political task. In the interest of securing more equitable forms of justice possible in our society, Christians have failed to challenge the moral presuppositions of our polity and society. Nowhere is the effect of this seen more powerfully than in the Christian acquiescence to the liberal assumption that a just polity is possible without the people being just. We simply accepted the assumption that politics is about the distribution of desires, irrespective of the content of those desires, and my consideration of the development of virtuous people as a political issue seems an inexcusable intrusion into our personal liberty.
The more destructive result is that the church has increasingly imitated in its own social life the politics of liberalism. We have almost forgotten that the church is also a polity that at one time had the confidence to encourage in its members virtues sufficient to sustain their role as citizens in a society whose purpose was to counter the unwarranted claims made by other societies and states. Indeed, only if such people exist is it possible to, the state to be “secular. Because the church rarely now engenders such a people and community, it has failed our particular secular polity: Christians have lacked the power that would enable themselves and others to perceive and interpret the kind of society in which see live. Christians have rightly thought that they have a proper investment in making this, and other societies, more nearly just, but have forgotten that genuine justice depend, on more profound moral convictions than our secular polity can politically acknowledge
Christians must again understand that their first task is act not to make the world better or more just, but to recognize that the world “IS” is and why it is that it understands the political task, as it does. The first social task of the church is to provide the space and time necessary for developing skills of interpretation and discrimination sufficient to help as recognize the possibilities and limits of on, society. In developing such skills, the church and Christians must be uninvolved in the politics of or society and involved in the polity that is the church. Theologically, the challenge of Christian social ethics in ,at secular polity is no different than in any time or place it is always the Christian social task to form a society that is built on truth rather than fear. For the Christian, therefore, the church is always the primary polity through which we gain the experience to negotiate and make positive contributions to whatever society in which we may find ourselves.
Emphases mine
This part:
the church is also a polity that at one time had the confidence to encourage in its members virtues sufficient to sustain their role as citizens in a society whose purpose was to counter the unwarranted claims made by other societies and states
as much as any others, have me , once again, thinking about how the Church of the Saviour got it right from the get-go, way back in 1947 when they began.
They insituted as a core part of their polity a “School of Christian Living”, which has evolved into the present day Servant Leadership School. All propective members were required to take some core classes in Bible and society. They explored what the Bible meant when it talked about “darkness”, and what it meant by “Light”. Gordon Cosby, the pastor, told a group that I took there to “tour” the Church and its ministries, that “all my life I had heard in church about the darkness and coming to the light, and never heard anybody say what the darkenss was or what the light was”. This reliance upon Biblical “language” void of distinct references is what so irks me about so much preaching in the Church today. Rather than being most concerned with WHAT we are being warned against, we are treated to what I call “Fortune Cookie” sermons which spout non-distinct “lessons” which can be then “applied”. The reswponsibility of a church to “hear the word of the Lord” is basically lost, since we abstract all particular meanings out to some “natural theology” with which the hearer does wikth as he or she desires. Gone are the serious confrontations with the issue of money, poverty, violence, war, and other “sensitive” issues.
If we do not learn in the church the neccessity of recognizing and naming the powers, then we are doomed to be swayed by them. We are allowing “the way it is” to determine our stance. If our churches are not standing in opposotion and contrast to the fraudulent “truth” claims of the state, then what has become of its status as beaerer of truth?
