Chapter 5: Now You’ve Gone to Meddling
Chapter Five
Now You’ve Gone to Meddling
“You can’t build a straight wall out of crooked bricks.”
“You can build a crooked wall out of straight bricks.”
It’s so much fun to listen to preachers argue, particularly when they get carried away with their own rhetoric. The first preacher in the argument above was trying to make a point about the primacy of evangelism in the Christian life. He was focused on repentance, salvation, and new birth. He was trying to say that you need all those things if you are going to have a vital faith. The second preacher was in the “social action camp.” She was aware that the Christian life is more than evangelism. She was trying to say that you can have all the “saved” Christians you want, but that they have to do something about their faith, to live it out in the social, political, and economic areas, if it’s going to be a vital faith.
The truth is, we need evangelism and social action, a warmed heart and dirty hands. John Wesley was clear about that. He wanted the Methodist people to be born again. He also wanted them involved in works that would change society. Wesley referred to those works as works of mercy. Beyond works of mercy (though this is not Wesley’s language) are works of justice. Sometimes, it just isn’t enough to feed the hungry. We have to ask questions about what’s wrong with a society in which people are hungry? Why can’t we, as a nation, feed the hungry, provide medical care for the sick, house the homeless, and so on? If the problem is in the systems that deliver those goods, do we need to change the systems? In this chapter, we will explore the concept of “social holiness,” looking at it both theologically and spiritually. Then, in the chapters that follow, we’ll look at how that holiness found expression in specific areas on English life in the eighteenth century, and how Wesley’s example can become a model for United Methodists in the twenty-first century.
Wesley and Social Holiness
First, we have to recognize that Wesley was a social, political, and ecclesiastical conservative. His early nurture and the thought-world in which he lived did not give him the freedom to organize active programs of resistance and social change. In spite of that, both his actions and writings lay the groundwork for social action. The General Rules urged the people called Methodists to resist evil and to do good. Those are open-ended statements—there are no limits on resisting evil and doing good. Therefore, when we notice that we are providing food for larger numbers of people each week at the food bank, we can rejoice that we are feeding the hungry. But, sometimes, we need to do more than that. We need to ask, Why are so many more people hungry? What’s happening that they cannot earn a living and feed their families? Is there a fatal flaw in the current economic system that works against these people being able to make enough money to buy food? Wesley may not have raised the question in exactly that way, but he did set out to both provide immediate relief and work to bring about social change so the relief would not be necessary.
Chapters 6-15 provide examples of how this process worked out in Wesley’s life in a wide range of social, economic, and political arenas, and we’ll save the specifics for those chapters. Here we raise a more basic question. How did Wesley’s understanding of sanctification (holiness) provide a theological foundation for “social holiness,” for what we have chosen to call “works of justice”?
Sanctification, for Wesley, involved the whole person, living in the reality of a whole world. The idea of the kingdom of God was not, for him, just something that individuals work toward in their personal lives. Rather, he was concerned about the whole of life. Holiness was not just the way one said one’s prayers, or related to God in private ways. Holiness involved doing good to others, and, sometimes, doing good meant challenging social, political, and economic systems.
Can I be holy if my brother or sister is hungry, or homeless, or in prison, or sick, or a slave? Can I be holy if I do not do everything in my power to change the situation in which my brother or sister finds himself or herself? Sometimes what I do is the simple act of charity and personal caring; sometimes what I do must involve challenging the systems that put my brother or sister in that situation.
While Wesley did not use that language, he lived it out, as we’ll see in the following chapters.
He did set a pattern for a Christian response in the secular world to bring about justice in the name of Christ.
And What About Us?
As we begin to think about social holiness in our own lives, we pause to look at some basic documents about faith and life in twenty-first century United Methodism. The first is “The Baptismal Covenant I,” the order for baptism and confirmation in our beloved church. At baptism, the questions are asked:
Do you renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness, reject the evil powers of this world, and repent of your sin?
Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves? (The United Methodist Hymnal, p. 34)
A note on the use of words is important here. Often, when we talk about justice, we mean something more like revenge. We want “justice” done to a murderer, or rapist, for example. Justice, as we use it here, means working toward a more just, or fair, social order. It means working toward an order where each person finds his or her basic needs met, and has the opportunity to improve her or his situation. In the Bible, justice is most often defined as caring for the widow, the orphan and the resident alien. These were the people on the margins of society, people who had no legal rights or protections and most stood in need of the community’s help. The Psalms, the prophets, and the wisdom writers all judge the rule of the king, or the success of society, on the basis of how they care for those who are not in a position to care for themselves.
The Christian life, for United Methodists, is rooted first in grace and then grows toward social justice and holiness. The questions suggest, first, that there are spiritual powers that we need to reject. Paul called these the “principalities and powers.” We tend to refer to them as “isms” and call them by such names as racism, sexism, ageism, and so on. The spiritual powers are those realities that are more than just the sum of the sins of individuals—they exist above and beyond individual sins. The evil and injustice we’re talking about here are sums that are greater than the whole of the parts. They are “spiritual forces of wickedness.” Racism, for example, is a reality that is more than just the accumulation of the racial feelings of however many billions of people there are on the earth this week. It is a pervasive evil that infects us, even as it feeds on our own feelings about race. In a life committed to holiness, we battle against these spiritual forces of wickedness. Sometimes that battle involves political and social action.
The questions also proclaim that God gives us the freedom to resist evil and injustice in all its forms. God sets us free to resist racism, economic oppression, dictatorship, attacks on human rights, and/or anything else that denies to any person the opportunity for the fullest possible life. To live a holy life means resisting them in all the ways we can. Some Christians choose to resist by refusing to participate in war, or protesting against war. Others buy stocks in companies and try to change company policies through action at stockholders’ meetings. Still others work to influence city councils, state legislatures, or Congress to change laws they perceive to be unjust. A holy life means more than praying, reading the Bible, or attending worship. It even means more than doing good works, caring for the needs of our neighbors. A holy life also works with others to try to bring the political, social, and economic systems of our age into something that resembles the Kingdom of God. And the holy life grows out of the grace of God, as that grace fills our lives and changes us.
The second basic document at which we need to look is the “Social Principles.” This document is an attempt on the part of the church to speak to issues in today’s world that are larger than the individual, or the individual’s attempt to bring about justice in those issues. The Social Principles call upon the whole church, the people of God, to work together to resist evil and oppression in these areas. Individuals obviously have to contribute to this work, but it requires the combined efforts of the whole church to bring about significant and lasting change.
The Social Principles are written/rewritten every four years by the General Conference (the only body that can officially speak for the United Methodist Church). Because they can be rewritten every four years, positions taken by the church may change, in the light of either new knowledge on a subject or new discernment of God’s will on the part of the church. Some issues drop out, as situations change. Other issues appear, as new questions arise. The Social Principles are grounded in theological and biblical understandings, and the General Conference attempts to apply those understandings, as faithfully as possible, to specific questions in our world. There are six sections in the Social Principles, each section dealing with an overarching area of concern. They are:
The Natural World, which includes space, energy, science and technology and the environment.
The Nurturing Community includes the family, marriage, divorce, sexuality, abortion, death with dignity, and other topics.
The Social Community deals with racism, the rights of religious minorities, children, youth, the aging, women, persons with disabilities, persons of different sexual orientations; questions of population, alcohol and drugs, medical experimentation, genetic technology, rural life, media violence, the right to health care, and organ transplantation and donation.
The Economic Community deals with property, collective bargaining, work and leisure, consumption, poverty, migrant workers, and gambling.
The Political Community deals with basic freedoms, political responsibility, education, civil obedience and disobedience, criminal justice, military service.
The World Community addresses nations and cultures, national power and responsibility, war and peace, justice and law within a global context.
The Social Principles cover a wide range of topics, many of which come out of Wesley’s basic concerns. Some of the statements may surprise you. Did you know, for example, that the Social Principles consider war to be “incompatible with the teachings and example of Christ”? The conclusions the Social Principles draw from that phrase are startling, to say the least, in the light of all the wars in which we find ourselves engaged. That is only one example of how the Social Principles offer guidance of the life of holiness in our world.
Do we have to believe in The Social Principles in order to be United Methodists? No, but since they are official statements of our church, we have to take them seriously. When we disagree, we need to be aware of the reasons for our disagreement in the light of the teachings of our church, and to ask ourselves how our own actions may contribute more to social holiness than does the statement of the church.
Questions for Reflection
For Further Reading
Manfred Marquardt, John Wesley’s Social Ethics (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1992).