Whatever the rationale furnished by theology or tradition, the church cannot accept the assignment of a “non-role” in regard to social issues. Withdrawal, non-involvement, silence, quietism--these are a social stance of considerable impact, an implicit endorsement of the status quo. “Doing nothing” may sometimes be the right response; but “doing nothing” always and on principle is surely wrong. We must remember that there are sins of omission as well as sins of commission. Though not a biblical proverb, the old adage is true: “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.”
But there is a more important reason why dropping out, withdrawing, and remaining silent is a mistake. The consistent witness of Holy Scripture from Genesis to Revelation is that the people of God have a unique and crucial mission to those around them. God is not just the God of the gathered, redeemed community of faith alone; nor is he the God of the afterlife and innerlife alone. The God of Abraham, Deborah, David, Mary, and Paul is creator, sustainer, and redeemer for the whole earth and the whole of humanity. This is no esoteric, partisan, liberal, or socialistic reading of the Bible. Biblical faithfulness calls us clearly to carry out a mission in the world that includes not only “telling the old, old story of Jesus,” not only praying, but promoting public righteousness and healing human hurts. It is a mistake to withdraw from society or to reduce the social ministry of the church to less that what God has called us to.
If the first mistake is withdrawal, the second one is conformity (“worldliness” is what oldtimers called it). Social activism can be as much a betrayal of the calling of the church as social withdrawal. It is not enough for us just to run out there and get involved, if in so doing the church conforms to the world, following its agenda and using its tactics. But if we do not consciously, deliberately, prayerfully ask God to shape our Christian stance and strategy on social issues, we shall inevitably be shaped by something else (tradition, fear, the mass media, personal economic factors, and so forth).
David W. Gill (1946- ), “The Unique Role of the Church in a Troubled Society.” From Servant Leadership, Volume Two: Contemporary Models and the Emerging Challenge, James R. Hawkinson & Robert K. Johnston, editors (1993), pp. 63,64,65.
How can we be the church in this world and not be in pain? How can we be the church in this world and not suffer? How can we be the church in such an affluent culture and not be uncomfortable? Read Jeremiah again. Read about his anguish at the sin of his people. Consider his moral outrage at the injustice of the wealthy. Many evangelicals can whip up outrage at the sin of others; but I suspect that sometimes that outrage is a comfortable mask for moral superiority. If I denounce the sins of others, it must mean that I am holy, or at least not as bad as they are. I would be more convinced if they wept for those sins rather than gleefully denouncing the sinners. We should remember Jesus wept when he predicted the destruction of Jerusalem. How many of us have wept over genuine injustice in the world? How many of us have, rather, simply grown numb to it?
John E. Phelan, Jr. (1950- ), “The Humiliation of the Church,” from The Covenant Church in the Postmodern World (The Covenant Ministerium, 1998), p. 11.
The Pietist Spirit
Significant in Spener's [1635-1705] appeal for diligent love of neighbor and for avoidance of self-love was his stress on motivation. Christians were to test their impulses toward doing good works by sharing them with a trusted confessor, reporting regularly on how opportunities to practice Christian love were taken or neglected. Actions clearly contrary to the will of God were to be avoided; where it was uncertain what the love of neighbor required, action was always preferable to neglect. Spener's realism regarding good works undertaken in the name of Christ is commendable. On the one hand, his ethic transcended a mere saccharine summons to benevolence; on the other, it is insisted that genuine motivation match the deed....
Several impressions of Spener's sentiments and actions toward relief for the poor can be drawn. His concern for the poor was keenly felt. His action on their behalf, however, was largely that of an enabler, a “consciousness-raiser,” and a motivating spirit behind the constructive measures that were taken. While he used the priesthood of all believers to good effect in involving the private sector, he clearly saw that this would be insufficient in the face of such momentous need. Clearly the government had to provide the necessities of life for those to help themselves. He was not idealistic about the poor. Their poverty did not make them righteous. Begging was an abomination. Corruption of the welfare system was possible. Two rules were absolutely necessary in poor relief. The first was a refusal to help anyone capable of self-help. The second designated charity only as a means the indigent attain financial independence. Spener has been a pioneer in public relief and in care for the poor.
K. James Stein (1929- ), Philipp Jakob Spener: Pietist Patriarch (1986), pp. 100, 240, 241.
The essence of the Christian life for [August Hermann] Francke (1663-1727) was that the born-again Christian should live for the glory of God and the good of his or her neighbor. This basic concept was present in all his thought and work from prison reform to legal reform, from the creation of a new type of orphanage to the establishment of two widows' houses. We should not be surprised, then, that this understanding pervades his educational thought as well. He lamented the dreadful state of education among the poor and wealthy alike, particularly in Germany “as experience teaches. For the children are not directed with appropriate earnestness to how they should apply everything that they hear from the Word of God inwardly and outwardly without ceasing, so that their ways conform to the Word of God, yea, they see just the opposite in their parents and teachers.”
Gary R. Sattler (19 - ), God’s Glory, Neighbor’s Good (1982), p. 52.
Ah, give me grace that I may help relieve and not make greater my neighbor's affliction and misfortune, that I may comfort him in his sorrow and all who are of a grieved spirit, may have mercy on strangers, on widows and orphans, that I readily help and love, not with tongue, but in deed and truth. The sinner says the wise man ignores his neighbor, but blessed is he who has mercy on the unfortunate.
Johann Arndt (1555-1621) . Quoted in Gary R. Sattler, God’s Glory, Neighbor’s Good (1982), p. 48.
Covenant History
The revival was the effect of God's mercy. The hammer that broke the rebellious heart of the Swedish peasant and proletarian was the hammer of grace. “Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us that we should be called the sons of God.” The great, incontestable yet incomprehensible fact was that God cared. God cared for the besotted and the beslimed, the vain and foolish, the stupid and ignorant and silly. God loved the sinner.
The experience of grace softened the heart toward the other. Men who bad been forgiven were ready to forgive; men who had tasted of compassion became themselves compassionate. Hence there flows from the revival a mighty tide of benevolence, at first spontaneous and unstructured, later ordered and institutionalized. The Mission Friends showed in a palpable way their concern for the wayfarer, the men who followed the sea, the sick, the child, and the old. It is their story we tell in this chapter.
Karl A. Olsson (1913-1996), By One Spirit (1962), p. 379.
The revival movement in Sweden had broken and ploughed fallow ground in many areas of communal life, but especially in giving place to women. In the 1850s two women, Maria Nilsdotter and her close friend Britta Jonsdotter, from nearby Karlskoga in the province of Varmland, gathered other women in a conventicle around the gospel and made the remarkable discovery that because of grace they were also bound to the needs of neighbor . In this case, “neighbor” meant lost children being auctioned for farm and domestic labor much as were black slaves in early America.
Appealing in vain to town and church officials, Maria, Britta, and other women in the conventicle found many of these children, bought them at auction, placed them in homes, and taught them to read and write. Their only means of support came from the circle of sisters themselves by sewing, handwork, and other marketable skills.
Out of this conventicle came a children's home, school, and Sunday school, thus laying the groundwork for what is known today as the Karlskoga Folk High School. One of Maria's sons, Carl Johan, was converted and became an outstanding lay preacher and colporteur. He also became the father of David Nyvall, one of the founders and the first president of North Park College in Chicago. Maria Nilsdotter became known as Mor i Vall (Mother in Vall), Vall being the farmstead on which she lived. Her homestead outside of Karlskoga draws scores of visitors each year. And all of this because Maria, a widow at the age of forty with six children of her own, was a Pietist, female, and trouble-maker whose vision for lost children upset the status quo in town and church.
Glen V. Wiberg (1925- ), This Side of the River (Published by Salem Covenant Church, New Brighton, Minnesota, 1995), p. 75.
In many of the populous industrial centers on our field, it often happened that children of Swedish immigrants were found to suffer from the lack of shelter, food, and clothing. They were often forsaken by parents and relatives and left to shift for themselves in a strange environment. The parents were not always responsible for their plight: sickness, death, and lack of employment played a vital part. The curse of the liquor traffic took its toll of victims, as did other sinful pools of iniquity into which the Swedish immigrant often fell. Numerous cases where children were left without proper care came to the attention of our pastors, but they lacked the means to solve these problems within their communities. Thus God led these men, whose hearts he had touched with the tender mercies of the Christian attitude, to seek a way out by means of an institution which could serve as “The Good Shepherd” or “The Sheltering Arms” for boys and girls who were endangered by life in the slums in our great centers of industry.
Bernard Peterson (dates unknown), Golden Jubilee, The Eastern Missionary Association; Historical Sketch of Fifty Years 1890-1940 , The Eastern Missionary Association (1940), p. 52.
It is Wednesday afternoon, the thirtieth of September, 1885, in Princeton, Illinois. An anxious man sits tensely, barely hearing the discussion as it proceeds. Delegates are at work on the problem of incorporating their seven-month-old organization legally. They call it: The Swedish Evangelical Mission Covenant Church in America. The meeting is moving to its close; people have been in session since Friday, and they are restless. The anxious man knows it. He tugs at his beard, shifts his lean frame in the chair, and watches his friend Björk, the big man with the mutton-chop whiskers sitting in the chairperson's seat....
What is driving this ordinarily mild fellow? Why is he sitting here, waiting for the chairperson's nod, his ordinarily peaceful eyes glinting with tension, impatient of all the legal talk?
Henry Palrnblad wants the new organization to establish what he calls a Home of Mercy. He wants it badly, and no secret about it. He has been working furiously for two years, patching up the shattered wreckage of human beings tossed by emigrant waves into the streets of Chicago. All summer long the cholera rages: when it subsides, there are widows and orphans everywhere. Trusting, pink-cheeked servant girls fall into the hands of immigrant-runners, those dark and sleek-furred rats who ply their trades wherever quick money shows. Pregnant and miserable, where is home to these Småland lasses who have no English and no money? It is a raging, steel-tough world of men and speed, careless of safety and hard on the weak. A seventeen-year-old girl travels to her sister in Chicago. She is jostled on the platform, pushed to the tracks: the great locomotive slices off a leg, part of a hand. What will she do? Her sister's name is Johnson, and the girl thought she lived in Chicago. How many Johnsons are there in Chicago? Already more than in Göteborg!
Palmblad's beat has experiences like this for him every day. He finds the Swedes in the poorhouse, in the jails, jammed “with people of all nations” into the wild wards of Cook County Hospital if they are lucky enough to be ill.
He does what he can with his resources. He picks up the orphans and brings them wherever he can find homes: they say Palmblad's “kids” are everywhere. At least five of them (some say as many as seven) are in his own house. Childless themselves, the Palmblads have more children than the old woman who lived in a shoe. But even so it is like sweeping out an ocean with a broom. He needs a place, a harbor for beaten people. This is what he wants. Everyone knows the need--you need not preach to an emigrant generation about the problems of homelessness. Then why is Palmblad nervous? Because of money. It is money that Björk and the other delegates will wonder about. A good craftsman in a good year (and 1885, like 1884 and 1883, is a depression year in America) can earn about $500. Nobody doubts much that the new Covenant has a future, but at the moment it is small, still torn by theological and political tensions. In the local congregations, people are scratching to pay for pastors and for modest buildings. In the seven months since its establishment, the Covenant has enjoyed a total income of $863.34, has a balance in the treasury of $104.33! And what Palmblad wants will cost thousands of dollars!
That has not stopped him. No sooner had the February meeting ended than Palmblad was making his case with Björk, buttonholing everyone else who would listen. While Bjbrk sailed for Sweden in search of a teacher for the proposed Swedish division of Chicago Theological Seminary, Palmblad roamed the city, on the lookout for a suitable place. He thought he had found it--in north Evanston, Illinois. Everything now depended on this meeting. Bj6rk had promised him a hearing.
And now he gets it. He has the floor, and this not very eloquent man makes his case. There is a long discussion, a skeptical feeling in the air. It is not that the delegates do not see the need. They doubt the money, and they have reason. But they cannot deny this man his fighting chance.
They give him a resolution declaring a Home of Mercy to be necessary “for orphans, helpless widows, and the sick.” They give him a committee to evaluate the north Evanston property, and they authorize its purchase if it looks good, and if money can be found to pay for it. It is a good committee: Björk and F. M. Johnson are heavyweights among the preachers; Sven Youngquist, the faithful treasurer, is joined by the future chancellor of the exchequer, Charley Peterson. Volatile John Eagle and Palmblad himself complete the group.
Still, the final resolution puts the matter squarely up to PaImblad. He is authorized to raise the money, among “Americans” as well as Swedes, by direct contact and by subscription lists sent out to the churches. Does the meeting think Palmblad can do it? It is hard to say; they are giving him a chance. It is the best they can do.
It is Friday morning, the tenth of September, 1886. Henry Palmblad, proud chairperson of the committee on the Home of Mercy, stands to report to the second session (this is now no matter to be put off to the end) of. the Covenant's second annual meeting. “Who could have dreamed, when at our last annual meeting we discussed the erection of a Home of Mercy ... that we could report ... not only the establishment of a home, but what is greater and more wonderful, its blossoming into full activity. But the Lord has done it, and it is wonderful to our eyes.” He proceeds to details.
The committee, says Palmblad, rejected the north Evanston proposal, settled instead on Mr. Becker's property, three acres in Bowmanville, Illinois, improved with a two-story brick residence, a small frame house, and a barn. And all for $5,500! Terms: $2,500 for possession, $1,000 annually thereafter. From the Stockholm settlement (now Douglas Park) came Edward Johnson and his wife to superintend the work, at $25 a month, plus room, board, and firewood. From Sweden came Anna Lowisa Anderson, an experienced nurse, at $12 a month. A competent Swedish cleaning girl, at $1.50 a week, completed the staff.
After remodeling and repair (cost $869.91) and the general equipping of the premises (cost $915.20), the Home of Mercy was ready for action. On the sixth of May, 1886, Andrew Forsberg of Chicago was admitted, then Carl Lundberg of Marquette, Michigan, and Clara Börjeson of Pullman, Illinois, and Clara Lindgren from the Cook County infirmary, and so on until by annual meeting time, PaImblad can report that fourteen people have been given care, and more are on the way....
By 1903, with the erection of a full-scale hospital facility, Palmblad's dream had changed from an enthusiasm of dedicated amateurs into the cool practicality of professional practice; from a Home of Mercy open to sufferers of all ages and from every malady including homelessness to a highly specialized two-sided operation--a home for the aged and a hospital for the sick....
Something had been lost of the special poignancy that attended Palmblad's report in 1886: their first death was “a little one-and-one-half-year-old sister” (the youngest daughter of widow Anderson). Something had been gained in facilities: by 1910, 4,120 people had received care, and fifty-three were now resident in the home. Even if it was not tanner Palmblad's world any longer, he had served it well.
Zenos E. Hawkinson (1925-1997), “Consider Our Beginnings...” ( Covenant Tract, 1988).
The children [of E. August Skogsbergh, 1850-1939] did not always think well of their father's bigheartedness, because sometimes he went so far out of his way to help a person who sought his aid that he greatly inconvenienced his own family. One of his daughters recalls such an incident. A woman with three children had been deserted by her husband and asked Skogsbergh to help her find the absconded spouse. He refused to go on a man hunt, but he procured employment for the woman in a children's home where she could keep her family together. That was, however, not all he did. While he was making those arrangements, he let the woman and her children live in his home, which then for a while consisted of eighteen persons, all dependent on him for their daily bread.
Erik Dahlhielm (1880-1955), A Burning Heart: a Biography of Erik August Skogsbergh (1951), p. 174.
Mlton B. Engebretson assumed office as president of the Covenant Church in Pasadena, California, June 23, 1967. His keynote Scripture was a word from I Corinthians 9:19-22, “Whatever a person is like, I try to find some common ground with him so that he will be willing to let me tell him of Christ.” The Covenant's mission he saw as finding a common ground with people in a “velocity-paced age” in order to win them to Christ....
The question might well have been asked by the new president of a small, ethnically-oriented, largely middle class denomination, what possible common ground the Covenant could find with this explosive and potentially destructive age. To that question his answer could have been negative or narrowly apocalyptic. He might have spoken of powerlessness or the need to huddle passively in expectation of the imminent Parousia.
It is significant that he followed neither course. He called the church to relevancy and meaningfulness. He asked for positive action. “The church ought to be not only abreast of unique contemporary social, moral, and spiritual world needs, but also far enough advanced in her thinking and leadership to be helpful at the times when she is most needed.”
He did not say it at once but it is clear that Milton Engebretson believed that if the Covenant Church was to be relevant and helpful to its time, it would need to change not only its “approach, method, and ministry,” about which he spoke, but its understanding of itself--its identity and its allocations of power.
Karl A. Olsson (1913-1996), A Family of Faith (1975), pp. 127,128.
Calls to Involvement
Throughout history, church leaders and members have addressed issues of justice and compassion facing society. Those movements have led to the development of schools and universities, hospitals, parachurch (cooperative) movements, the civil rights movement in the United States, and the current battles over the sanctity of human life. In many forms, the church has championed issues of compassion and justice.
Yet within the church community, people have often set compassion and spirituality against each other. Some declare, “We have been commanded by God to feed the poor, to right wrongs and injustices wherever we find them in our community, our nation, or our world. God's church stands for justice and compassion.” Others insist, “We have been commanded by God to proclaim the gospel to all nations. What difference will a better world make if it is still on its way to hell? God's church is a witnessing church.”
But there is a third position: God's church is both a compassionate, justice-oriented church and a witnessing church. In the Covenant, we do not believe that the two are mutually exclusive. The gospel clearly calls us to address both sides of the human situation, for they are integrally related.
A Family Matter: An Exploration in Believing and Belonging (Inquirer’s Class Manual of the Evangelical Covenant Church, 1994), p. 19.
The Gospel...cannot be proclaimed to the world from a distance; it must be brought to the world in human lives which have entered into the agony of our time, When Christians know the despair and anguish, the dreams and aspirations of the world from inside rather than from a distance, both speech and action become relevant....
It is at the point of involvement in the burning social issues of the day–i.e., the struggle for racial justice, for peace, for social reform–that the greatest tension exists in the church. Some want to make such involvement the total content of the Christian life, thereby minimizing the concern to press for personal commitment to Christ. Others are persuaded that evangelism is the only proper concern of the Christian, thereby minimizing the Christian’s responsibility for his society. But certainly both of these extreme emphases are distortions of the biblical message. Both prophetic involvement and evangelistic concern are implied in the Gospel; both are commanded by God.
The ultimate concern of the Christian is that God’s “will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Because God wills a social order in which justice, righteousness, and peace are possible, the Christian will be involved in the struggle for such a society. Because God desires that every [person] participate personally in the redeeming grace of Christ, the Christian will be concerned in every form of its ministry to bring [others] to the conviction of sin and conversion to Jesus Christ. These two mutually support one another. They ought not to be in competition.
Donald C. Frisk (1911- ), The New Life in Christ (1969), pp. 96,97.
Some evangelical writers seem so fearful of overemphasis on social involvement that they insist on putting social concern under evangelism as a secondary or even lower element of the church’s ministry in the world. They sometimes suggest that social action may be a good preparation for evangelism–as a “door opener,” or as a consequence of evangelism. But these works are not seen as equal to evangelism in the mission of the church. Some still insist that “historically the mission of the church is evangelism alone.” This thesis is contradicted by the teaching and example of Jesus.
When the love of Christ is our motive and the example of Christ our model, we cannot put any genuine act of love in a second-class category. The first and great commandment calls for love of God and neighbor.
Randolph J. Klassen (1933- ), Jesus’ Word, Jesus’ Way (Herald Press, All Rights Reserved, 1992), pp. 32,33.
Give love to others and you will get it back. This is the essential rhythm of the emotional and spiritual life. Jesus put it very pointedly: “For whoever would save his life, will lose it: and whoever loses his life for my sake, he will find it again” (Luke 9:24). You are to “love your neighbor as yourself.” This means that the acceptance you feel for yourself should spontaneously be communicated to your neighbor. I say spontaneously because this is something you should not have to stop and think about. If you really accept yourself, acceptance of your neighbor should be immediate. If an alcoholic stood before you, would you be able to accept and love him? He would feel loved or unloved by you without your saying a word. If you could accept the possibility of yourself being in such a condition, then you could love the person who is down and out. Richard Baxter, pastor of another generation, upon seeing a drunken bum, said, “There but for the grace of God go I.” We must be able to see and accept ourselves in others in order to love them.
Harold R. Nelson (1927- ), “Do You Love Yourself?” (Covenant Tract, 1970s).
As Christians we have been the objects of infinite grace and mercy from God. We in turn should reflect this love of God in our relationships with others. There is still much injustice and oppression in the world, and as a Christian I should do all I can to remove it, whether I found it in school, at home, on my job, or on the street. A godly [person] finds no delight in making life harder to bear for those under [his or her] control and bidding. The heart that loves God will be quickly inclined to deeds of mercy toward the unfortunates of society. Think of some way in which you can help such.
Leonard J. Larson (1894-1973), “Neighborhood Relations.” From Covenant Graded Lessons, Special Unit, 1949, p. 71.
...Have we heard the Lion's roar so that we have become a prophesying community? I am afraid that while we rejoice in the Lion's roar (the free, lively Word of God), we much prefer to have the Lion caged in the safety of the zoo (in the church, or in the book, or in the tradition). Then we can visit the Lion periodically (once a week perhaps). And in the safety of the zoo, we can listen to the roar as a passing oddity. (Why was the pastor so fired up today?) We can at least feel good in knowing that the Lion is not extinct. (Don't we have the Word?) So we can still hear the roar, still claim to be people of the Word, but with the comfortable feeling he is quite tame and domesticated, that he will not be on the prowl, and therefore we can live without the need to tremble or fear.
Because the Lion is still around, it just isn't so! The Lion cannot be caged nor tamed. He is on the loose and has found his prey. As Pogo says: “We has met the enemy and they is us.” “You only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore . . . .” Have we heard the Lion's roar? We Covenanters can often become polarized over many issues. But as Arthur Anderson has [somewhere] reminded us: “ . . . When the segments have come kicking and screaming to hear the unmistakable voice from over the top of the holy mountain, we are one.”
What is so frightening and distressing to me in the Church today is how rare or even absent is the unmistakable voice from the holy mountain. A struggle to seize power? Yes. An effort is abroad to seize power, prestige, and influence for an evangelical majority that serve other ends than the Gospel. And there are many strange, alien voices. But no voice from the holy mountain! No roaring of the Lion! No faithfulness to the full-orbed biblical Word! No radical discipleship in following Jesus as Lord and perfect Example! No call to minister to Christ by identifying with the poor and changing oppressive social structures! No vision of the God of righteousness--the God Amos saw walking on the top of the heights of the world! Yahweh, God Sabbaoth is his name!
Our evangelical tradition is done for if we cease to hear the Lion's roar calling us to break our silence--to cry out against every perversion of the Gospel; to cry out against the exploitation of the poor; to cry out against the excesses of our standard of living; to cry out against militarism and the arms race and to say, “Enough! Enough!” But do we have the courage to look into the mouth of the Lion and to sense the enormity of both divine wrath and grace so that we become a prophesying community?
Glen V. Wiberg (1925- ), “The Lion’s Roar” (Amos 3:3-8). From Grace and Glory: a festschrift on preaching in honor of Eric G. Hawkinson, The Covenant Quarterly, 1981-82, pp. 128,129.
I may be simple, but I am not foolish. I know the importance of right belief and right organization and that Christ taught about both. He was no idle dreamer. He took time to recruit disciples and to teach them about belief in practice. But all of that was always in the context of servanthood and service, never just belief or practice or structure for its own sake. And let me tell you, friends, that the world is full of such people--many who are literally hungry and thirsty and naked and sick and in prison, and many others who are just as surely so in a spiritual sense. And what I think Christ is saying to us here today is that we who are proud to call ourselves Covenanters are going to be judged someday, just like everybody else, on the basis of how our belief and structure translated into ministry to such people.
... I heard a Salvation Army commander say recently when he was describing the work of the Army..., “When the Army is working right, it is both personal evangelism and social gospel, and you can't tell which is which.” I like that. Because we love the Lord our God with all of our heart and all of our mind and all of our soul, we will also love our neighbor as we want to be loved. The vertical and the horizontal in tune with God and in touch with our neighbor, not only preaching the Gospel but living the Gospel. Our faith made alive to serve.
So may it be for each one of us and for our Covenant until we someday again gather all together on the day of our Lord's coming. Amen.
G. Timothy Johnson (1936- ), “How Will We Be Judged?”, Covenant Centennial Keynote Address (The Covenant Companion, September, 1985), p. 7.
Church and Society
How shall we sing the Lord’s song in Boston, when otherwise apparently decent citizens degenerate into a beastly mob in response to a court-ordered desegregation of schools through busing? How did we sing the Lord's song in Chicago, when Martin Luther King, Jr. led marches into the white community to stir the public conscience in favor of open housing patterns? How did we sing the Lord's song in West Hartford, when the board of education first proposed busing fifty little black children on an experimental basis into its school system? How shall we sing the Lord's song in Willmar, and in Los Angeles, and on Francisco Avenue in Chicago, when it begins to dawn upon us that our uncritical patriotism and our ecclesiastical zeal may be tinged with a fatal flaw--idolatry?
I have stated the problem as a question, not because I have no deeply felt opinions about these matters. I do. I refrain from any quick answer in the conviction that to respond verbally would be to symbolize the death trap that tempts us and would beguile us. Verbal answers often betray a vanity and presumptuousness inappropriate for Christians, who have no business pretending that they can know perfectly the will of God for a particular human situation. We are all implicated in human sin, in the fallenness of our society and its institutions. And it is every Christian's struggle to discover how to live humanly and to sing the Lord's song in a strange, fallen land. Perhaps we all ought to forego answers to the human problem posed, or defenses against the possible implications of the question, and simply live with the problem, seeking to define it more clearly in human terms. The answer may greet us in our faithful living.
G. Dewey Sands (1924-1989), “To Seek Justice,” from Bound to Be Free: essays on being a Christian and a Covenanter, James R. Hawkinson, ed. (1975), pp. 102,103.
A family visited the church I was serving. After two consecutive Sundays, the husband said, “We are disillusioned with our present church, and think your church is what we've been looking for.” I set up an appointment to visit them. On my way to their home, I prepared the dialogue in my mind. They would say, “We never hear the gospel in our church. The Bible isn't really preached. We want a Bible-centered church that isn't all hung up on doctrine. We've been missing something in our lives. You preach the gospel, and we like that.” Then I would respond, “You've been Covenant all your life and didn't know it. Welcome to the Covenant.” But the dialogue didn’t go as planned.
The husband put a different spin on it. “We're leaving our mainline denomination because our minister always talks about our need to help the poor. He talks about injustice in El Salvador. Now he says the church needs to respond to people with AIDS. I'm sick of it. I like your church, where we hear about conversion and none of that other stuff.” I sat there speechless and could feel a bead of perspiration make its way down the center of my back as I groped for words. It was with some sense of relief that I greeted the news some months later that they were leaving our church to take a step even further to the right. Hans Kung said: “That person who preaches one half of the gospel is no less a heretic than that person who preaches the other half of the gospel.”
Glenn R. Palmberg (1945- ), “Giving the Invitation,” The Covenant Quarterly, November, 1993, pp. 38,39.
The church of Jesus Christ has a responsibility as the conscience, the moral and ethical voice, of society. We are “in the world” even though not “of the world.” As long as the church is here, we must be “the light of the world” and “the salt of the earth.” If churches and Christians do not fulfil this responsibility on local, national, and world levels, they help make the world more wicked and increase the woeful harvest. The Christian can help clean out evil and direct communities in the paths of righteousness.
Paul P. Fryhling (1912-1973), “Being a Christian and Showing It.” From Donald C. Frisk, Paul P. Fryhling, and Herbert E. Palmquist, The Christian Fellowship: an Introduction to the Church (1958), p. 42.
Conflict, whether in or out of the church, is inevitable in the practice of faith. Avoiding it is unreal. More so, bypassing opposition means missing important issues. So I want to argue for our getting involved in political caucuses or community organizations. Religion may not be mentioned, but there is more religion than meets the eye. Every time we ask about values we are on the spiritual question. You don’t have to be a sectarian plugging your own church to ask: “What is morally right?” or “What is the most loving thing to do?” The group may not be as sophisticated theologically as you are, but the concern is still there. Furthermore, a Christian may not arrive at easy black-white answers, as expected. Love and the letter often create dilemmas for those who want simple conclusions.
We..have to trust the providence of God in the unbaptized corridors. More good is accomplished than we realize.... We in the churches often think we do not amount to much in the public arena.... Not so! ...We evangelicals miss real opportunities for being “ministers of reconciliation” by our indifference to what occurs within group relations. We assume that reconciliation is strictly a theologically individual affair that takes place only inside church or at evangelistic meetings. Nonsense! Being present at a union-labor bargaining session can be a big headache! But the dynamics of what transpires enfold rich ground for divine reconciliation. When participants can honestly shake hands and accept one another under those circumstances, they have opened up channels for reconciliation to God. Not that it usually happens. But here is where Christians who have experienced the love of God truly within themselves can be honest-to-goodness reconcilers.
Arthur W. Anderson (1920- ), Wild Beasts and Angels (1979), 58,59,60,61.
Crucial to leadership in any congregation is the recognition that the congregation is intended by God to minister to the world. One suburban church stresses this approach well on the back of their bulletin. The ministerial staff are listed by name and described as “the ministers to the congregation.” The congregation is described as “minister to the world.” It is the responsibility of leaders to make such a vision real, by precept and example. In the process, every congregation will recognize some who have special gifts for the ministry of pastoral care. Alastair Campbell states it well. In contrast to the specialization and individualism of professionalism, there must be an emphasis upon pastoral care as the building up of the Christian community as a whole, and the ministry of this community to the world beyond itself.
Everett Jackson (1933- ), “The Role of Lay Leadership in Pastoral Care.” From Servant Leadership, Volume Two: Contemporary Models and the Emerging Challenge, James R. Hawkinson & Robert K. Johnston, editors (1993), p. 97.
[We] in the church need to be reminded that although [our] associations in the world are not always with [brothers and sisters] in Christ, [we] share a common [bond in] Adam. In [our] conscious respectability, [we] in the church so easily fall prey to an attitude of condescension toward [our] associates who are not members of [our] spiritual fellowship. One can feel for a person without looking down on him or passing by on the other side if he is in need, letting some Samaritan institution minister to him instead. Robes of righteousness are not soiled in the dust which surrounds human need.
C. Milton Strom (1911-1972), Holy Curiosity (Board of Publications of the California Conference,1966), p. 5.
The point that James makes from his definition of faith and works is that, as God has reached out in mercy to us, our faith will prompt us to reach out in mercy to other people who are poor and needy and who have nothing with which to buy our favor.
This, of course, is not all there is to being a good Christian. But the roots of the whole system of Christian ethics begin with a concern for the poor and hungry. In the Old Testament, God's people were never to forget that God had been merciful to them and that they had a responsibility, therefore, to be merciful to the strangers and dispossessed. (Exodus 23:9; Numbers 15:14, etc.).
We Christians have been poor and needy in God's eyes, with nothing of value to offer to him, and we have become objects of his mercy. When we trust God and when he accepts us entirely by grace through faith, the normal response of that faith is to reach out in mercy and concern for others who are poor and needy, just as we were, in the eyes of God. Any faith that does not result in such action is of no value.
Our response to the needs of millions of needy and starving people is the most certain test of the reality of our faith. If we do indeed believe that God has acted with compassion for us, we will act with compassion for others in need. From this root we may trace the whole biblical system of Christian ethics. True faith results in action, and authentic Christian action begins here.
Wesley W. Nelson (1910- ), “Faith and Action.” From “Don’t Park Behind a Truck” and Other Chapel Talks (1982), p.26.
We're only kidding ourselves if we think some pious fasting and spiritual meditation during Lent is going to help perpetuate some kind of benevolent white supremacy. If the Cross is what the New Testament says it is, it makes all men equal at its foot and it makes them brothers in Christ. It also makes them willing to lay down their lives for one another. The Cross would make one community of all men, but all men are not of one community in a world of sin.
Apartness in principle is a device of sin. Therefore a real Christian is less concerned for his own culture, his standard of living, or even life itself than he is that his neighbor of any race might become his brother in Christ.
C. Milton Strom (1911-1972), Holy Curiosity (Board of Publications of the California Conference,1966), p. 54.
There is nothing in Christianity that relates only to our salvation; our faith relates to all of life, including the roles of male and female. The issue is whether our attitudes concerning race, social class, and gender will be determined by our oneness in Christ in the new age or by the barriers and values of the old age.
Board of the Ministry and Covenant Ministerium, A Biblical and Theological Basis for Women in Ministry (Occasional Paper Number One,1987), p. 3.
Conditions exist in most communities which distress church members and embarrass the council of churches. Indignant talk might be heard through closed doors, but very little is translated into community action. Unfortunately, the people in the church do not seem to be aware of their power in a democratic society---especially in a day when so large a percentage of the people in an average community claim church membership. If the churches in your city really wanted to, they could by collective action clean up the town and elect any council members they want. But they don't. Most of them offer lame excuses in spiritual phraseology.
C. Milton Strom (1911-1972), Holy Curiosity (Board of Publications of the California Conference,1966), p.13.
As Christians we should take our citizenship seriously. We are called to be salt and light in our country as well as in our community. Altogether too often Christians thank God on Thanksgiving Day for the blessings of living in a Christian country, but neglect do anything about preserving the spirit of Christ in our nation. We should remember that as individuals we are American or Canadian not only on the Fourth of July and Dominion Day, but every day of the year. As Christians it is our responsibility to put forth every effort to prevent our nation from becoming pagan. A garden quickly becomes but a patch of weeds if it is not carefully tended. That is also true of a nation. Unless we conscientiously cultivate the good, the evil will take possession.
Peter P. Person (1889-1984), Living the Christian Life (1958), p. 41.
Commission on Christian Action
The Gospel is like a bird. It needs two wings to fly. One is the wing of faith, the other of action. If either wing is missing a bird will never soar. Neither will Christians who attempt to live out only part of the Gospel. To belong to Christ involves both faith and action. “As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead” (James 2:26, NIV).
The Evangelical Covenant Church established the Commission on Christian Action because it values personal and corporate involvement in social issues. The primary responsibility of the commission is to prepare statements concerning ethical or political attitudes or actions appropriate to these issues. Normally these statements take the form of resolutions which are reviewed by the Covenant Executive Board and may be recommended to an Annual Meeting.
Resolutions are benchmarks of our thoughts as reflected by the vote of an Annual Meeting. However, because the Covenant Church values the privilege of personal freedom these resolutions are not binding on either an individual or the church. “The principle of personal freedom, so highly esteemed by the Covenant, is to be distinguished from the individualism that disregards the centrality of the Word of God and the mutual responsibilities and disciplines of the spiritual community” (Preamble of the Covenant Constitution). Consequently, resolutions reflect our understanding of biblical teaching applied to social issues and encourage personal, biblical, and theological study. Some resolutions ask for specific action such as the call for particular publications or inclusion of special issues to be addressed by the denomination or economic pressure on governments considered to be in violation of basic human rights.
The Commission on Christian Action: Resources for Social Responsibility (1986-91), pp. 1,2.
Often people who are seeking to learn more about the Evangelical Covenant Church ask what the Covenant believes about issues like abortion, divorce, gun control, homosexuality, and so on. The answer is that, in the Evangelical Covenant Church, the Bible is our authority. Covenant churches do not have doctrinal statements other than the Bible. To help churches and individuals apply biblical teaching to contemporary issues, the annual meeting of the denomination frequently debates and often adopts position papers or resolutions. Members need not be in total agreement with the positions taken by an annual meeting. These positions explore both diversity and consensus as we prayer fully think together about biblical application to current issues. While a resolution usually indicates a consensus of opinion, no resolution is binding on local churches or members.
The following is a partial listing of position papers and resolutions from the last ten years of Covenant annual meetings. You may wish to look these up in the Covenant Yearbook or ask for copies from your pastor or class leader. divorce and remarriage, a biblical and theological basis for women in ministry, ethical guidelines for Covenant ministers, baptism, disarmament, organ donation, drunk driving, nuclear weapons freeze and reduction, abortion “no first strike” commitment, homelessness, securing access to adequate health care, giving thanks for freedom, substance abuse and addiction, the environment use of resources, AIDS, local church Christian action committee, disability, [and] political disenfranchisement.
A Family Matter: An Exploration in Believing and Belonging (Inquirer’s Class Manual of the Evangelical Covenant Church, 1994), pp. 42,43.
How Is the Covenant Involved in Christian Action?
The Commission on Christian Action has regularly supported involvement in social issues within the denomination, its regional conferences, local churches, and institutions.
National and regional involvement includes ministries like the Covenant Benevolent Institutions, Covenant World Relief, Habitat for Humanity, North Park College's outreach ministries, World Servants, Bread for the World, Hands Extended Lifting People (HELP), and the Children's Homes of Cromwell and Princeton.
A partial list of ministries undertaken by local Covenant churches includes sponsoring refugees, soup kitchens, homeless shelters, employment development programs, child care for parents of hospitalized children, counseling and shelters for unwed mothers, and letter writing campaigns to lawmakers on issues.
A few churches prepare bulletin boards with the names and addresses of elected officials along with notices on proposed legislation and sample letters on social issues. These are all efforts to sustain awareness of issues and programs.
Christian action is more than a denomination adopting social resolutions. It is as broad as our denominational efforts in Covenant World Relief or as simple as our rolling bandages for mission fields. Christian action is living the gospel. In the final analysis Christian action is an individual Christian, standing before God, and asking how he or she can be a responsible steward of the message of Jesus Christ.
The Commission on Christian Action: Resources for Responsibility, Commission on Christian Action (1986-1991), An Occasional Paper: Number Four, p. 2.
