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III. CHRIST AND MAMMON

John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, to which I belong, had strong views about money. In his later years, surveying the remarkable success of the movement he had started, he said that he had no fear about its continuation. His great fear was for its inner spirit. He had observed two things. First, although most converts to Methodism were poor, many moved into the middle class. Second, middle class Methodists divided their loyalties between God and the acquisition of wealth. For the latter I have chosen to use the word familiar to us from the King James and early revised versions of the Bible: Mammon.

The upward mobility Wesley observed with distress is easily understood. In the spirit of the earlier Reformers, Wesley taught that Methodists should earn all they could, save all they could, and give all they could. He himself earned quite a lot through his many publications, lived frugally, and gave away what he did not need. Hence he accumulated no private treasure to distract his attention from doing God's work. His followers became disciplined workers and lived frugally. Many of them were generous with their money. But this generosity did not prevent the accumulation of some capital and its wise investment. The security and growth of this capital became a matter of concern to them, competing for their attention with their service to God.

When we ask why Methodists have grown lukewarm, it is well to accept Wesley's own analysis as an important part of the answer. We have grown lukewarm because we have become rich. Despite Jesus' specific denial of this possibility, we try to serve both God and Mammon. I fear that, in this respect, we do not differ greatly from Baptists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and even Lutherans.

If this is the case, then it may seem that I have been wasting our time by talking about our theological failures as causes of our decline. But I do not think so. Given that it is impossible for middle class churches to have the fervor of original Methodism (or contemporary Pentecostalism), nevertheless, they have their ups and downs. I have been comparing the lukewarmness of the end of the twentieth century with the health of the first part of the century. This may be due in part to the increased wealth of our membership, but not primarily. Our churches were already largely middle class by the beginning of this century. Yet at that time they had strong convictions and acted on them in a way that does not characterize us now. That is the change I have been trying to understand.

Although I do not think the lukewarmness of the oldline churches in our day can be explained primarily by increased wealth during this century, I do think that the ageold struggle of God and Mammon is important to its understanding. Mammon has achieved a cultural and political dominance in today's world that it has never had before. The failure of the church to speak to that change is one reason for its lukewarmness.

Our failure to address the growing dominance of Mammon is a theological one, somewhat comparable to the others I have discussed. We have acquiesced in changes during the past fifty years that are of enormous importance to the planet and all its inhabitants. These changes are in direct contradiction of clear Biblical teaching. In that context there is little possibility of wholehearted commitment to Christ.

On this topic the Bible is clear. It gives almost no support to the pursuit of wealth and has few good things to say about those who possess it and protect it. On this point Jesus himself is especially clear and emphatic. Furthermore, this consistent emphasis cannot be discounted as a mere reflection of the social mores of the time. On the contrary, it is a word spoken against both the common practice of the day and the ideology that supported it.

Thus the Bible has posed here a different kind of challenge to the church than the one posed by the tension between its support of patriarchy, on the one side, and of justice for all, on the other. The theological challenge from an early day has been to relate a teaching that is clear, but quite impractical, to the ongoing life of a community. This is the same challenge that we face today.

The solution would be easier if Christianity were, in fact, an otherworldly religion. But Jesus was focused on this life. He was by no means indifferent to human illness and hunger. He taught us to pray for our daily bread. When God's will is done on earth as it is in heaven, all will have their physical needs met. We cannot, and should not, be indifferent to the healthy working of the economy that makes this possible.

In all economic systems wealth is unevenly distributed. Although we should be more respectful that we are of the achievements Communism in its effort to move society toward equality, these efforts were never really successful. Given the apparent necessity of some spread in wealth and income, and given the extreme spread in the world today, what are we to say to those serious Christians who have more than others?

In much of the tradition the church has taught that the real sin is not the possession of wealth in a context where others are poor, but attachment to it. One should accept wealth as the gift of God, but always be ready to surrender it, should God call for that. Meanwhile, one should use it wisely and generously. If, on the other hand, one finds that this degree of economic responsibility interferes with one's spiritual life, and one desires to be perfect, one may renounce the world, take the vow of poverty (along with obedience and chastity) and become a monk or a nun. As a monk one's material needs are cared for by others, so that one is free to devote onself to spiritual practices.

The Reformers rejected the option of monasticism. Everyone should deal with her or his responsibilities in the economy and family structure. But the Christian should not be attached to wealth. And what one does not need should be given to meet the needs of others.

Throughout the period when Christian teaching shaped the thinking of the West, this teaching largely accepted the economic structures of the day. On the other hand, it also influenced them. Greed was uniformly regarded as a deadly sin. This certainly did not make greed disappear! But it reduced the public status of the rich.

The church, in continuity with ancient Israel, was deeply suspicious of money making money. Money should be earned by labor. The church tried to adjust prices so that there would be a fair return to labor. Of course, market forces of pricing according to supply and demand were also operative, but they were moderated by the church. Usury, which simply meant lending money at interest, was legally forbidden to Christians. This inhibited the rise of a capitalist system. But since the need to borrow money continued, nonChristians performed this service. The Jews were denied other economic opportunities and then detested because they performed a service regarded as profoundly immoral.

For other reasons, especially the belief that giving to the church accumulated merits helpful to the soul after death, the church itself became rich. Normatively this wealth was used for proper purposes of the church and for the sake of the poor, but there were also major abuses. The princes of the church were able to enjoy that wealth personally, even if it was not treated quite as a private possession. But this misuse of wealth by the church was not passed over in silence. It was the object of repeated and massive protests and major reform movements.

Wealth and power were separate. Power came through location in the feudal system. Of course, rank entitled one to rents and thus to considerable wealth. But this could be overspent, so that the noble could be short of funds. The wealthy, on the other hand, did not always have much political power. They were sometimes in danger of dispossession by the powerful.

This secondary role of wealth resulted partly from the moral judgment against it. The accumulation of wealth was associated with the sin of greed, and often with usury as well. Its possessors were envied and resented, but not admired. The leaders of church and government had higher status. The highest status was reserved for the saints.

I remind you of these familiar facts in order to sharpen the contrast with the present. Today neither social mores nor Christian teaching provides any significant inhibition to the acquirement of wealth. The system by which this is done is based on what was then called usury. The greed which drives people to gain wealth is respected as a proper motivation. Those who succeed exercise enormous power. And they are held up before the public as worthy of admiration and emulation. In general we are led to believe that it is wiser to trust the future to their hands than to those of elected officials. The latter are condemned for selling out to the rich, but there is little criticism of the rich for buying them.

My thesis is that today the religion of the world is the worship of Mammon and that the church protests very little. There is no lukewarmness about serving the economy. It is the call to serve God that fails to resonate.

We should try to understand this enormous religious change. It has occurred most fully in just those countries in which our now oldline denominations have played the largest role. It seems that we are at least complicit in letting these changes occur with so little challenge.

No doubt one step in the process was the easing by Protestant churches of the laws against usury and the heightened respect accorded merchants and bankers. This is a topic on which much has been written. I will not pursue it here.

But the most remarkable spiritual shift has been with respect to the evaluation of greed. Through most of Christian history it was assumed that when one person accumulated more, others had less. Thus the aim to accumulate, greed, was the aim to rob others. The evil of greed was not only that it was self-centered, and even for the self, distracted attention from more important matters. It was also that it aimed at harming others.

In the eighteenth century that view was challenged. Greed was renamed rational self-interest. It was shown that when each person acted in terms of rational self-interest, the economy as a whole grew. There was more for all. Hence, this behavior, instead of being condemned, should be celebrated.

The most influential exposition of this view was by Adam Smith. It is to him that we owe the idea that "an invisible hand" so adjusts the outcome that individual selfishness leads to the public good. Actually, Smith's total vision was far more nuanced. For him morality is based on sympathy, and sympathy generates community. Economic transactions take place within community and are checked by community feeling. That rational self-interest is the best way to price goods in the market by no means does away, in Smith's view, with the importance of community feeling. However, his work contributed greatly to the acceptance of the autonomy of the market and of the academic discipline devoted to its growth.

The major application of the new economic thinking was to the process of industrialization. It was largely because of industrialization that the self-interest of each contributed to growth of the whole. Of course, the growth of the whole also involved enormous losses for large segments of the population, especially skilled artisans who were replaced by machines operated by workers with minimal training. The growth of the whole also destroyed numerous traditional communities and made more and more people dependent on others for their access to a livelihood. It is a morally very ambiguous affair. Nevertheless, as beneficiaries of the process, who have come to take for granted conveniences and luxuries unimagined even by the rich of earlier days, it is difficult, and perhaps hypocritical, for us to attack it.

In face of these changes in economic thinking and industrial practice, the traditional teaching of the church became irrelevant. Christians failed to develop new teaching of comparable clarity and relevance. The church expressed concern for those who were hurt by the process and left aside. But it did not offer a critique of the system as a whole.

Our oldline denominations gave some encouragement to workers to protest exploitation and to organize. They supported efforts to end child labor and to make working conditions more humane. They directed some rhetoric against the sins of the rich. But they did not protest the emergence of an economy based money making money and on the rational self-interest that had formerly been called greed.

The protest that arose came from outside the churches and attacked the churches as well as the system. I refer especially to Marxism. Marx did not question the power of the new system to generate wealth, but he depicted its moral values as totally bankrupt and sided with traditional Christianity in his evaluations. He saw the churches of his day as acquiescent and even as supporting the capitalists against the workers they exploited. He saw that they used belief in God and an afterlife as an opiate to distract people from the quest for justice. Hence, he denounced them and called for atheism.

This association of atheism with the rejection of the capitalist system led the churches as a whole to continue their support of that system, seeking only to ameliorate its harshest consequences. In our oldline churches, however, there was also strong socialist sentiment. What was advocated was a democratic socialism in which popularly elected governments would take over major industries and use their profits for the sake of all. In fact, democratic socialism has played a considerable role in Europe, although it was discredited in the United States.

The relative health of the oldline denominations in the early part of this century was due in part to their serious engagement with the economic and social issues surrounding industrialization. It is true that they were divided in their thinking between those who wanted extensive public ownership of the means of production and those who wanted only to bring more justice into the system of free enterprise. But on many issues they could work together. People deeply concerned for the suffering of exploited workers could follow the leadership of the denominations with some enthusiasm.

Two changes have occurred in the twentieth century that have undercut this relative health. The first was the success of the churches' efforts. The New Deal implemented many of the recommendations of the churches, and a sympathetic government created a climate in which labor unions could exercise considerable power. After World War II this new legislation combined with the power of labor unions and general prosperity led to complacency about the economy on the part of the churches. Concerns were more properly directed to those who remained largely excluded from the benefits of the industrial economy, such as the Blacks. For this exclusion, labor unions shared responsibility with capital. Unions often abused their power in other ways and lost the sympathy of church people. Hence, the earlier alliance between labor and the churches ended, and church people ignored basic questions of the economy.

Second, the economy shifted from a national to a global one. This is not a simply technical matter. It involves a shift in fundamental loyalties and commitments, a religious change. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the loyalties of most Christians were deeply divided, but the division was not as much between God and Mammon as between God and nation. Lives were laid down for the sake of nations. Economies were conceived of in national terms and were also in the service of nations. Adam Smith's fateful book was entitled The Wealth of Nations.

This nationalism continued through the first half of the twentieth century. Indeed it reached its apex during this period. National Socialism in Germany carried nationalist feeling to its extreme point with horrible results. When Germany was defeated, Europe could not be reconstructed in terms of nation states claiming absolute sovereignty and devotion from their people. It was reconstructed instead as the European Economic Community.

Around the world there was something of a counter trend for several decades. Newly freed colonies established themselves as nation states and worked to transform their colonial economies into national ones. While Europe worked toward a transnational economy within its continent, the world seemed to be moving toward an international economy.

There were, of course, movements toward a global economy throughout that period. These took the form chiefly of a series of General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade, all seeking to lower barriers to trade. But it was not until twenty years ago that it became apparent that the goal was far more radical than had earlier appeared. The goal was to give free access to transnational corporations to all the world's resources and all the world's markets.

This entails a reversal of the relation of nations and corporations. Previously it was assumed that corportions were chartered by governments for the public good. Charters could be revoked if corporations did not service that good as determined by governments. Now governments were to be in the service of corporations. Their task has been redefined as providing the workforce and infrastructure for corporations as well as a good climate for investment.

What has this to do with God and Mammon? A great deal. The justification for this enormous shift is that it is the most effective way to increase wealth. It is argued that all other considerations should be subordinated to this. In short, the shift is carried through in the service of Mammon.

It might be argued that beliefs played little role in the change. Certainly there were other factors. The technological advances of recent years make national boundaries seem irrelevant and thus support globalization. Those who stood to benefit by the shift from an international to a globalized economy had great political power. Accordingly, one might argue that the ideas used to justify this shift were only rationalizations.

In my opinion, however, this would be a serious mistake. Even today as one speaks with people of goodwill who do not themselves benefit from the dominance of economic actors over governmental ones, one finds that the argument that this makes for economic growth has enormous power. Without the widespread discrediting of nationalism, on the one hand, and the widespread moral support for the global market engendered by the argument for growth, the shift could not have occurred.

Recently the methods that have proven successful in industry have been extended into other fields. Agriculture has been industrialized in this country, and we are pushing this process around the world. The ancient ideal of professions is giving way to industrial models. Teachers now unionize to negotiate contracts with management. We now speak quite easily of the health industry. Churches are told to study their "markets" and adapt their "products" to these. Thus the globalization of the market is being accompanied by the marketization of society. All this is accepted for the sake of economic growth.

Ironically, the moral support for the global service of Mammon has arisen at just that time when the argument justifying the acceptance of greed is proving fallacious. That argument is that when each pursues her or his rational self-interest, the community as a whole benefits. It was the apparent truth of this doctrine that silenced the church's objection to greed.

It is true that greed moves the industrial economy forward. When the market mentality is extended to agriculture and medicine, certain gains in efficiency are achieved. The growth of this market has produced great wealth for many. In the fully industrialized societies most have benefited. Those of us gathered here are deeply in its debt.

We have now discovered, however, that the old assumption that greed involves impoverishing others works on a collective, if not always on an individual, basis. As the global economy grows larger, the resource base is impoverished and the capacity of the environment to absorb our wastes is overstressed. The growth of our collective human wealth involves the impoverishment of other creatures now and of humanity as well in future generations.

Thus far, the recognition of limits has led only to efforts to use resources more efficiently. That, of course, is highly desirable. It can slow the exhaustion of the resource base, the poisoning of the environment, and the changing of planetary weather. But as long as the basic commitment is to the service of Mammon, it will not prevent catastrophes of ever growing proportions. Greed proves, after all, to be a mortal sin.

If this were the only problem with the service of Mammon, we would be caught in a profound moral dilemma. When Christians must choose between meeting the needs of those who are immediately at hand and acting for a more distant greater good, they find the choice extremely difficult. To ask the poor to suffer now for environmental reasons would indeed be painful.

But we have learned that there is another error in the analysis that shows the positive role of greed. When greed, or the service of Mammon, is given free play as in our present global economy, the poor suffer along with the environment. It is true that the pursuit of profit in the global market place increases market activity and the global product. But it results in a distribution of goods that increases the gap between the rich and the poor. Indeed, the truly poor seem to gain nothing even by strictly economic measures from increased economic activity. When we consider the total effect of this global market upon their lives, we must judge that their condition, and their prospects, decline.

What is clear today is that Adam Smith was right. A free market operating internal to an effective community can enhance the general good. But this is true only because the effective community can use some of the wealth generated by the market to meet the needs of those who do not otherwise benefit from it. An effective community can also set standards of pay and working conditions that insure that workers share in the increasing wealth.

None of this occurs in the global market. Poor nations compete with one another to make themselves attractive to investors by lowering standards. Labor cannot organize globally to demand its rights. No global body exists to regulate global wages and working conditions. We see, therefore, the effects of greed unchecked by community. It transfers resources from the weak to the strong, from the poor to the rich.

Now my question is, has the church anything to say about the service of Mammon? The silence is in fact deafening despite the clarity of the Biblical witness on this topic. Why?

Partly the answer stems for the longer history of our oldline denominations. Secularized society has excluded us from many fields in which the church was once a major player. What has been left to us are some religious gestures and the meeting of some personal and community needs. We are invited to address "moral" issues, but these are chiefly in the field of personal, especially sexual, morality.

Partly the answer stems from the extent to which we have accepted this narrowing of our role. Obviously, this acceptance has not been total. The relative health of our churches in the early decades of this century illustrates this fact. So does the relatively healthy response to Martin Luther King's campaign for civil rights. But overall we have acquiesced; so that evaluating political and economic developments on the national and global scene is no longer an evident part of our role.

Partly the answer stems from the fact that we are not among those who suffer from the ravages of the global economy. Indeed, we have ourselves, as a group, never been so well off. The global economy fattens our retirement programs and enables our institutions to secure the gifts they need for their survival. We know as Christians that we are called to look out not only for our own interests but also for those of the poor and oppressed, but when they are far away, their suffering touches us only a little.

Partly the answer is that we have been persuaded of the positive outcome of the service of Mammon. We do not really believe that we must choose between God and Mammon. We believe that we can serve both. Indeed, by giving free reign to the rational self-interest of all, we have been persuaded, in the long-run the poor will also benefit. Hence our very concern for the poor has been channeled into moral support for a world organized around greed.

Finally, partly because this persuasion is so comforting, and because it is so well supported by the media that shape our opinions and the experts to which they appeal, we have stopped thinking about these matters theologically. We do not want to listen to the counter-evidence that grows yearly more abundant. If such evidence were believed, we would be driven to fundamental rethinking about matters that seem far beyond our competence. If we are forced to reject our tacit assumption that what is happening is good, we fall back on the assumption that it is inevitable. As long as there is nothing we can do about it we are excused from thought.

Whatever the reasons, in this most determinative of areas, even more than in the others I discussed in the previous sessions, the church has abandoned its theological calling. For those who are sincerely seeking a way to save the world from its ominous prospects, it does not even offer a forum for discussion. It offers no encouragement to those who are struggling to save the world.

It seems rather obvious that a church that does not even discuss the salvation of the world will not claim wholehearted allegiance from those who deeply care. They may recognize that as the church goes about its regular activities it does make some contribution to the possibility of that salvation. The Christ proclaimed by such a church may be worthy of appreciation, but hardly of wholehearted devotion. We can hardly ask for more that lukewarm support.

But is a "Christ" who is not the savior of the world truly Christ? Can we name as Christ one whose service is compatible with greed and the service of Mammon? Can we serve Christ without caring deeply what happens to the world?

Obviously, my own answer is No. My answer is also that the church does not have to continue to ignore the most urgent issues of the day. It can decide to deal with them and to bring what it knows from its scriptures and tradition to bear upon them. If it does, it can validly claim a greater degree of commitment.

It is obvious that Jesus did not reflect on the danger to planet and its future inhabitants from an ever growing economy? He knew nothing of industrialization with its wonderful and horrible consequences. We cannot simply go to the gospels for the answers to our current questions.

But we can go to the gospels to learn what the most important questions are. We can learn from the prayer Jesus taught his disciples that we are to hope for the coming of a world in which God's purposes are fulfilled. We can learn that those purposes include the good of God's creatures, including their physical good, and especially that of the "least of these". We can learn that we are called to care so much for the coming of this world that we subordinate everything else in our lives to this end. We can learn that the pursuit of personal wealth is incompatible with that form of life, although if wealth comes to us as we pursue other goals, it is an opportunity and not an evil.

This leaves us in every generation with the task of determining what processes at work in our time move toward the world for which we pray and which move in other directions. From this we can make tentative judgments as to what it means to serve God in our time. We can submit our judgments to discussion among those who would serve Christ. And we can listen to the still small voice that prompts from within. With all this, there is no guarantee that we will be correct; nevertheless, we can act with strong conviction.

To what conclusions are we drawn today if we follow these procedures? I will offer my own reflections, inviting you to engage them critically at least in your own minds and when possible in interaction with me and others.

One conclusion that is fairly explicit in what I have already written is that the economic order should serve the community rather than control and destroy it. This leaves open the question as to how independent markets should be of community control. My own judgment is that the community should set the conditions of market activity and then provide a level playing ground for the players. The conditions would be those required for the well-being of the community.

The well-being of the community is judged in particularly by the well-being of "the least of these." Increasing affluence of the rich does not constitute a positive value if it separates the rich further from the poor. The community is only as well off as its weakest members.

Further, the measure of well-being should include income and wealth, but it should not be measured primarily in narrowly economic terms. The lot of the poor is improved by increased income, but it is improved more by their empowerment. The health of the community is to be measured by the number who participate in it. If some are simply objects of the charity of others, the community is to that extent unhealthy.

We know that in fact personal happiness correlates very poorly with the amount of goods and services consumed beyond basic human needs. Surveys show that relative standing in a community does affect personal happiness but that increased prosperity over time has little such effect on either the rich or the poor. This should not surprise readers of the Bible. The goal of increasing production and consumption profoundly misdirects energies. It is far more important to provide every individual a recognized and dignified role in the community and to find ways to work out the inevitable conflicts of community life without violence and alienation.

These general principles give strong support to one form of development now practiced against the other. The two types to which I refer are "bottom-up" development and "top-down" development. The vast majority of the money that has been spent on development has been of the latter type. This consists in corporate investments, in government-sponsored programs for education and health, and in public support of infrastructure such as harbors, highways, and dams. Some of these have certainly benefited considerable numbers of people, but some of them, especially large dams, have also displaced millions of people with appalling records of resettlement, been environmentally destructive, benefited the rich far more than the poor, and disempowered many of those they were designed to benefit. The record is very mixed, and some observers believe that overall this kind of development has done more harm than good.

"Bottom-up" development follows the principles I have derived from the Bible. It has commanded far fewer resources, but it has done very little harm and a great deal of good. Two types will give concreteness to this claim.

The Grameen Bank in Bangladesh pioneered in micro-lending. It makes very small loans to very poor people, mostly women. These loans are for the purpose of allowing them to initiate or expand tiny businesses. An astonishing percentage of the borrowers succeed in their enterprises and repay the loans. They are able to become more productive, thus adding to the total production of the communities in which they live. But beyond this narrowly economic measure, they also this program contributes to the self-confidence and self-respect of the borrowers. Typically they work closely with other borrowers providing one another mutual support. Much of what they produce is sold in their own communities, thus increasing the consumption of the poor rather than of the rich.

A second form of "bottom-up" development may be called Gandhian. Gandhi saw that the vast majority of the people of India lived in villages. Rather than an industrial-urban development that would concentrate wealth and power in fewer hands, Gandhi called for village development. He believed that simple technological improvements could be introduced into villages that would increase the productivity, and thus the income, of the villagers while strengthening, rather than destroying village life. The symbol of this development was the sewing machine which could be introduced into individual homes.

Village or community-development was not adopted in India as the major style of development. Nevertheless, many church and nongovernmental organizations follow this model. A typical approach is for a worker to live with the villagers for a while and then encourage them to identify their most pressing needs. These might be for firewood or water to become available locally. This availability would greatly reduce the time spent in obtaining the necessities of life and allow that time to be spent in more productive work.

The community designs a project to meet the need and may require some outside assistance. But in true community development, most of the work is done by the community itself. The community understands what is being done, takes part in it, and claims ownership of it. The community must be capable of maintaining what is built and be motivated to do so. When the project is completed the community will take pride in it. It may gain the confidence needed to undertake other projects. The project is successful if the community not only gains economically but also grows in its self-respect and ability to work together.

Any form of development may add to environmental stress. But in comparison with top-down development, bottom-up projects do so in trivial ways. Some projects may actually reduce such stress, as for example the development of nearby woodlots that end the need to strip distance forests. An enormous amount of bottom-up development is environmentally sustainable. Top-down development has long-since crossed the line into unsustainable forms.

The shift in emphasis from top-down to bottom-up development would have enormous implications for the overall economy. So many of our basic economic institutions are now justified only by their supposed contribution to global economic growth, that if that goal were replaced by that of development of, by, and for the poor in community, most of them would be dismantled or transformed.

Since the Jubilee 2000 program focuses on the question of the debts of poor nations, we can consider this as a place to enter the issues. How were these debts amassed? In the process of attempting top-down development? The structural adjustment programs that cause so much suffering around the world were instituted in order that these debts could be paid. Their effect is to squeeze the poor by lowering wages and raising the cost of goods. They also encourage the rapid exploitation of forests and other natural resources, another form of top-down "development." The reason that repayment of debts has been given so high a priority in the global economy is that otherwise the system of global trade will be impeded. The reason the system of global trade is so important is that it contributes to overall economic growth.

If we collectively decided that overall economic growth is not our goal, but rather the sustainable improvement of the lot of the poor, none of this would matter. Forgiving the debts would immediately allow for wages to rise and prices to fall and other taxes on the poor to be reduced. It would, of course, also release funds for health care and education for the poor.

Needless to say, matters are far more complex than this. Many loans have been made in honorable ways for valid purposes. Many Third World borrowers have been corrupt and are still living privately on wealth accumulated dishonestly. Without confidence in the integrity of national promises, trade would be reduced to the highly inefficient form of barter. Abrupt forgiveness of all debts would be unjust to many and lead to chaos harmful to many whose welfare is important to Christians. Debt relief is crucial to the well-being of the poor; but which debts are forgiven and how matters are handled is a matter to which our best thinkers need to give their attention.

Furthermore, with respect to the overall pattern of development, a change is not a simple or harmless matter. We have gone so far down the road of top-down development oriented to increasing global production that any new shift would have enormous traumatic consequences, just as have the shifts from traditional to modern economies and from national to global ones. This is not the time or place to discuss how a transition could be effected with minimal suffering. At present, indeed, no one really knows. Those with the resources to study such matters are devoted instead to keeping the global economy going and growing. The church has not entered into the discussion.

But the fact that a change is difficult is not a reason to reject it. The prospects of not changing are far worse. If the church encouraged serious analysis of our situation and helped people in particular Third World countries to think through how change could be effected, the Christ of that church could command deep commitment. Such a Christ would recover the right to be called the Savior of the World.

In my lecture on exclusivism I pressed for sustained re-thinking of the our Christology. That is not what is needed with respect to countering the service of Mammon. In many respects our traditional teaching suffices. Our failure, here, is to apply that traditional thinking in the context of a rapidly changing world. Such application, too, belongs to the theological task. If we pursue it seriously we may make many enemies. Some of our own members will leave us. But the curse of lukewarmness will be removed.

Christ does not command us to avoid controversy. Nor does Christ insist that we be successful by the standards of the market. Christ does call us to recognize that we cannot serve both God and Mammon and to choose God.

II. CHRIST AND EXCLUSIVISM

The unifying theme of my lectures is that the failure of the church to think through the meaning of Christ for our time is the deepest cause of the lukewarmness in our oldline churches, which in turn is the deepest cause of our decline. Although I believe this is true on many fronts, the most direct and obvious one is with regard to the Christian stance toward other religious communities. Our fuller encounter with these communities in the twentieth century has caused us to back off from our earlier simple affirmations about Christ without replacing them with powerful new assertions. As a result, we have grown lukewarm about Christ.

If we seriously believed that all those who do not confess Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior are necessarily destined to spend eternity in Hell, we would renew our zeal to reach them and convert them. It would be difficult to be lukewarm unless we were really indifferent to what happened to other people. Hence we know a set of Christological beliefs that overcome lukewarmness. And we know that some of our fellow Christians subscribe to those beliefs and are energized by them.

But it is obvious that we do not want to overcome lukewarmness with the destructive fanaticism that those beliefs engender today. And it is obvious also that few of us could believe these doctrines even if we tried. Now that we know something of these other religious communities and their quality of the lives they engender, we cannot suppose that a gracious God would punish their saints for failure to join the Christian church. Such a belief would distort the New Testament witness and our Christian heritage at least as seriously as the recognition that God has sheep in other folds.

We must give up that kind of Christian exclusivism, and it is my impression that most of us, practically if not always theoretically, have done so. The problem is that we do not have much clarity about where to go from there. If Jesus Christ is not the one Lord and Savior of all people, such that all who do not acknowledge him are damned, then who is he?

The easiest step to take has proven to be the idea that God has called people through different emissaries in different communities. Following any one of them has been salvific. Those of us who are Christians have found salvation through Jesus Christ. Hence he is our savior. The fact that others have found salvation through other figures does not reduce Jesus' importance for us.

What is changed, then, is the urgency of sharing our knowledge of God through Jesus with others. Instead of evangelism directed to converting Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists to Christianity, we look at all these people as having their own access to salvation and having no need of ours. Once we have taken this step of positive appraisal of religious traditions other than our own, we are likely to take another. Perhaps salvation can be found also in ways that do not require close involvement in any of these traditions. Secular humanism may also be a legitimate path. All those who today pursue "spirituality" while eschewing "religion" may be finding their way as well. In short, we are likely to conclude that, however greatly we are ourselves in debt to Jesus Christ, it is best for us to leave others to their own devices in finding their paths through life. We welcome people to our churches, but we do not go out to seek "the lost."

This process of reduction of our Christological claims is associated with a decline in the clarity of our understanding of salvation. The first step, acknowledging that there are multiple ways to salvation, could still be associated with a continuing belief in Heaven and Hell. If so, there could still be fervor about saving people from Hell. The fact that we suppose that Hindus and Buddhists can be saved from Hell in their way need not reduce our Christian concern for those in our own midst who follow none of the great Ways.

But belief in Hell as a place of divinely imposed torment was declining even before the decline of belief in Jesus as the exclusive way of salvation. The question then becomes, what is salvation? Is it identical with living a good life, or a satisfying one, or being psychologically healthy? If so, the close connection between salvation and the influence of Jesus is harder to establish even in the sphere of Christendom. Some of the best, happiest, and healthiest people do not acknowledge Jesus as the reason for their good fortune.

But if salvation is not a matter of Heaven vs. Hell, and if it is not virtue, happiness, or health, what is it? If we associate it with what the great religious traditions offer, then we need to study those traditions more closely. What is common to the ways they teach and the goals they set before us?

John Hick has done us the great service of formulating a persuasive hypothesis as to the answer. He sees in all of these traditions a movement from centeredness on the self to centeredness on that which is radically beyond the self. In the Jewish family of religions, this is understood as God. In traditions in which ultimate reality is understood impersonally, it is on the impersonal Ultimate. Hick chooses the term, "the Real," as a more neutral name for that which replaces the self as center.

Hick thereby provides us with a genuinely religious understanding of salvation. Also, it is possible to interpret much of the teaching of many traditions in a way that fits. It becomes fully meaningful to Christians to see that Jesus is one who showed us a life centered on God and God's purposes. Our worship and our teaching can certainly be understood as ways in which we are drawn beyond ourselves and our narrow self-interests. Similarly, Buddhists can understand the disciplines of meditation in which they engage as setting aside the private self in favor of a reality that is far more ultimate.

This genuinely religious understanding offered us by Hick enables us to restore genuine meaningfulness to our Christological affirmations. To affirm Jesus as our Lord and Savior, since in fact it is to him that we owe the impetus to this fundamental transformation of our life-orientation, is a truly strong confession. That some others have found a parallel impetus in other contexts does not detract from this. We are not left in a relativistic sea in which every way of life is equally valuable and equally to be accepted and affirmed. We have a real message to proclaim to others in the name of Jesus Christ.

Despite these important strengths of Hick's position, I do not think it offers us a place to rest in our quest for an adequate Christology for our time. The problem for me is that it understates the differences among the great traditions of which he speaks. The limitation of his formulation differs in relation to different communities.

Although the move from self-centeredness to centeredness in the Real can be discerned in all the traditions, it is not central to all. For example, Judaism has its saints who certainly exemplify this transformation. But for many Jews salvation is more a matter of what happens to the people of Israel as a whole in concrete history than the spiritual attainments of individual Jews. This historical orienttion carries over into Jesus, whose central message was the coming of the basileia theou, the realm of God. Of course, seeking the coming of this realm involves transcending self-centeredness, and the realm itself will certainly by characterized by this transcending, but the focus is on what happens to the world as a whole more than on the individual.

If we turn to the religions of India, the individualism of Hick's unifying vision and the centrality of personal change is not the problem. The problem there is the notion of centeredness. For example, the Buddhist realization of no-self is not well described as centeredness in the Real. It is better understood as the overcoming of all centeredness, the realization that there is nothing to be centered in or on.

If we allow each tradition to formulate its own goal in its own way, we end up with considerable diversity. Certainly, parallels can be drawn here and there, especially among the traditions that now dominate the planet. All of them were formed in what Karl Jaspers has termed the axial age, the middle of the first millenium before Jesus. All responded to an individualistic quest for salvation that was alien to primal religion. All tended to separate the human from the natural world and to focus on what is distinctively human. All affirmed a dimension of reality not apparent to sense experience. But beyond such generalizations, the differences should also be acknowledged and appreciated.

In this situation, it is not arrogant or "exclusivist" to describe the uniqueness of Christianity -- or of any other tradition. Christianity differs from every other tradition in religiously important ways. Its understanding of salvation is not identical with that of other religious communities. What Jesus Christ means to us, what he has contributed to the world, is not the same as what Gautama Buddha has done for Buddhists or contributed to the world.

To affirm Christian uniqueness today, therefore, is not to belittle or denigrate other communities. That they are different leaves entirely open the question of the relative truth of our respective claims and the relative value of what we offer. It does recognize, however, that any such evaluations will prove more difficult than they would if, as Hick proposes, they can all be evaluated by their success in promoting the achievement of a common goal.

If each tradition is different, then the norms by which they value one another are also likely to be different. It should not surprise us that Buddhists, judging all traditions by their norms, find Buddhism best. Nor should it surprise us that, when Christians judge all traditions by Christian norms, we confirm ourselves in the view that Christianity is best.

The recognition of this circularity is an achievement of rather recent times. Some would view it as a part of postmodernism, and I have no objection to that. Unfortunately, from my point of view, many postmodernists draw, from this accurate judgment, the conclusion that each community is shut up in its own patterns and lacks the ability to communicate with those outside it.

This conclusion is often connected with the common postmodern view that language has no reference to a world external to it. Thus every element in a language has its meaning by its reference to other parts of the linguistic system. For example, the meaning of "God" for Christians is bound up with the meaning of "Jesus Christ," of "Spirit," of "worship," of "obedience," of "creation," and so forth. All of these words, in turn, have their meaning only in relation to one another and to "God." Hence there is no reference to a world outside the language to which words in other linguistic systems could also refer.

This is an extreme example of the relativism that pervades our culture. It authorizes Christians to make whatever statements they find appropriate about Jesus Christ. These statements may even sound exclusivist. If within this linguistic system Christ is the only Savior and Lord, and if, within this system, all who are not part of the community that uses this system are damned, then that is what is to be said and believed. But what we believe about others has nothing to do with the others, only with the language we use about them. They live in and through their quite different linguistic system.

This approach reduces any interest in revising the system. That interest arises when a system is judged inadequate in relation to the world it purports to describe. When it is supposed that there is no such world, then the system is ultimate and there is no higher norm in relation to which it is to be corrected.

This understanding can be used by outsiders as a way of removing the beliefs of religious communities from serious consideration as to their truth. It can be used by believers to justify their traditionalism. For those believers who understand this account of what they are doing, it leads to great tolerance of other groups doing their thing. For those believers who genuninely live within the linguistic system, it may overcome lukewarmness, but it renews the dangers of the earlier exclusivism.

I am not sure that anyone really believes all this. Certainly, I could not. Those who describe this view of religious communities seem to stand outside the communities and talk about them as if they existed objectively to their description -- as if their description were an accurate account of what went on within them. Inplicitly, therefore, they assume that their language does have the reference beyond itself that they deny to the religious communiites. But the fomulation and defense of this position at least tells us something about the tendencies in contemporary scholarship of which we need to be aware.

I have been describing one response to the recognition of the distinctiveness of each tradition. I have made it clear that I do not favor it. I now turn to the response that I do favor.

Instead of supposing that the differences among us mean that there is no real world to which our language refers, I propose that we try the hypothesis that there is a very complex world to which we are all referring in most of our language, whether religious or not. Suppose that in fact there is a world of innumerable events related to one another in unimaginably multifarious ways. Suppose, then, that each culture, each linguistic system, ultimately each person in each moment, highlights some of these events and patterns and thus attains sufficient order to navigate the flux.

When Christians speak of God, of Christ, of Spirit, of worship, and of obedience, we are highlighting some features of the world in which we are immersed. When Buddhists speak of karma, of anatman, of dependent origination, of nonattachment, and of enlightement, they are highlighting other features. The fact that what we are highlighting is there to be highlighted does not preclude that what they are highlighting is there in the same way.

This points us, I am convinced, in the right direction. But it oversimplifies matters considerably. This is clearest with respect to worship, obedience, nonattachment, and enlightenment. These are not features of reality that exist fully formed without the participation of those who name them. Once we formulate the idea of nonattachment, for example, we may see that there are tendencies in that direction even prior to any naming. But it is unlikely that, where this tendency is not noticed, affirmed, and prized, it will be cultivated and fully achieved. Something like this can be asserted of many of the other features noted.

The question is whether this participation in constituting what is named is true of all these designations. This is partly a definitional matter. As Christians, we believe that God existed long before, and quite independently of, any human recognition. Our task is to conform what we think and say of God to this autnomous reality. We may define "God" in such a way that this is true, and in my judgment this provides, at a minimum, an important part of the meaning of "God."

On the other hand, part of the normal meaning of "God" includes the status of being acknowledged as worthy of worship, devotion, and obedience. Luther, on occasion, defined "God" as that in which we place our trust. By this definition, God may exist, but what that means differs from person to person. But Luther certainly did not intend to leave us in pure relativism. For him it is a serious mistake to place our faith in something other than the one true God whom we know in and through Jesus Christ. That God has reality whether acknowledged or not.

In a world of vast complexity, the selections we make by naming affect our actions and our actions affect the selections. Our names rarely refer in unambiguous ways to some one feature of reality. And their vagueness and multivalence itself affects our behavior and the forms of communication with one another. Christianity does not consist of a single unambiguous set of terms -- far from it. Neither does Buddhism. Nevertheless, it remains true that Buddhists in general perceive the world in ways that differ from typical Christian perceptions. These differences express themselves in differences of judgment with regard to what is important and how life is to be lived.

Within both Christianity and Budhism it is important to formulate what is said about the world well. Both recognize the limitations of any formulation. Christians know that our language can never be adequate to the holy reality. Buddhists more radically critique all conceptuality as inherently distorting of what it attempts to grasp. Yet Christians and Buddhists both prize excellent formulations of their vision and argue among themselves at great length as to which is best.

Some of these arguments are no doubt instances in which two thinkers are seeking to describe one and the same feature of reality, and in which, if one is correct, the other must be wrong. There are such debates, and they are important. But there are other instances in which the opponents are accenting and highlighting slightly different features of reality with the same terms. What each says may be true of those features that are of special interest and importance to her or him. The problem is that the other side understands the words a little differently, so that what is said is unacceptable.

At the time of the Reformation there is not doubt that both Luther and his Roman Catholic opponents thought that his formulation of faith and works was in contradiction with theirs. Today Catholic and Lutheran theologians are returning to those debates and are close to agreement that there is no such direct contradiction. They may conclude that there were overstatements of important truths on both sides, so formulated as to seem to exclude the truth of what was central to the other. From studying such instances, a Christian of irenic temperament may conclude that believers are likely to be more correct in their central convictions than in their negations of others.

There are still other instances in which some participants in the discussion may be talking about features of reality of which other participants are simply unaware. Among Christians this may occur in discussion between mystics and those who have had no mystical experience. They may also occur between those who have experienced dramatic conversions and those who have grown up as Christians. In these instances there is usually a good deal of shared language that helps to establish communication. It, then, often proves possible for those who lack the distinctive firsthand experience nevertheless to notice elements in their experience, to which they have not previously attended, that allow them imaginatively to have some understanding of what they are being told by others.

This last instance should help to prepare us for conversations between persons who have been formed in quite different communities and linguistic systems. Here the overlap in experience that is characteristic of Christians may not be evident. The language as a whole is different, and although, through the distinct languages, it is sometimes possible to discern common elements of experience that are being named, this cannot be taken for granted. Obviously, in these respects, interfaith dialogue is more difficult than that among believers in one tradition.

Before discussing how, nevertheless, it does occur to the benefit of both parties, I want to note how, also, it is in fact easier. In my experience, Christians are far less threatened by hearing Buddhists talk about their very different experience and belief system than by hearing other Christians. The formulation of the other Christian challenges my formulation of Christian faith in a way that the Buddhist formulation does not. Similarly, I have observed far more intensity of feeling in debates among Buddhists than in their discussion with Christians. This emotional intensity of internecine quarrels often makes it hard to hear the different truth being stated there, whereas Buddhists and Christians in their dialogue with one another are often eager to be taught.

This compensating advantage makes Buddhist-Christian dialogue enjoyable and fruitful in practice. Christians recognize that they initially do not know what Buddhists mean by such terms as dependent origination. Further, when they first begin to grasp its meaning, they do not understand why it is religiously important. The assertion that everything that is is constituted by the coming together of other things seems an interesting hypothesis, but quite outside the sphere of religious meaning. Nevertheless, as Buddhists first call attention to this character of all events, including each moment of human experience, and then explain how a mediator is inwardly affected by the realization of this truth, Christians can listen and open themselves to dimensions important to them.

What is learned is so different from what Christians have been affirming that it does not seem to pose a challenge to Christian faith. Yet it cannot be simply added to unchanged Christian formulations. Many Christian formulations are couched in terms of a substantial self in encounter with a substantial God. What Buddhists have noticed about reality makes those formulations unsatisfactory.

From the beginning Buddhists concluded from their central insight that the usual Hindu formulations of Brahman were mistaken. They rejected Brahman. When they encountered the God of Christianity, they heard much that was incompatible with their insight, and most of them rejected God altogether. And it is true that many Greek metaphysical ideas involved in traditional Christian formulations of the doctrine of God are undercut by the Buddhist analysis. Hence, in fact, what Buddhists invite us to notice about reality leads to modes of thinking that are deeply challenging to Western theism.

The actual situation has been that by the time the encounter with Buddhism became important to Western thinkers in the nineteenth century, the traditional idea of God was already losing convincing power. The encounter has intensified its problems. There have been two major responses.

The first response is to accent those traditions in the West that have moved in the Buddhist direction. These are the most mystical traditions, and specifically those forms of mysticism that identify what one finds in the depths of one's being with the Godhead. When this is combined with the insistence that this is wholly ineffable, it becomes possible to think that those who have discovered God in this way are experiencing the same reality as that which Buddhists have identified. The more personalistic aspects of God are then treated as having inferior status in the real order of things and for religious experience as well.

The second response is to distinguish God from dependent orgination. God may instead be understood as an element in every instance of dependent origination. It may be argued that the Jewish family of religious traditions has highlighted personal freedom and moral responsibility and the sphere of history in ways that have been neglected by Buddhism generally. We can then highlight that element in every human instance of dependent origination that introduces freedom and moral responsibility and the temporal asymmetry so important to the historical consciousness. And we can name that "God."

It is important to see that to identify God in this way is not simply to identify God as an aspect of human experience. In the Buddhist vision, what comes together in each event are entities that exist apart from that event and take part in constituting other events as well. If God takes part in constituting all events, God is of universal scope and in a crucial sense transcends all things as well as being immanent in all things. Apart from God nothing comes into existence. God is the source of life, of novelty, of freedom, of moral responsibility. Thus God is recognizably the God of the Bible.

There is, of course, much more to be said, but this is not the time or place to develop a full-fledged Biblical doctrine of God in the context of interfaith dialogue. I have pursued the matter as I have, however, to illustrate the consequences of thinking as I have proposed. If the totality of reality is far more complex than we have ever recognized, then it may be that profound human experience in different times and places has brought to light many of the important patterns that are to be found within it. It may be that when one develops a system of thought and life around some set of such patterns it turns out to be quite different from the system developed elsewhere around other patterns. But it may be that both sets of patterns are really there to be found.

If this is so, then interfaith dialogue is a way to learn more about the totality of things in which we are immersed. From each community we can discover what its distinctive experience has taught it. We cannot simply add these new insights to the old, but we do not need to reject the insights we have brought with us from our community in order to appropriate the new ones. The reformulation to which this dialogue can lead may be experienced more as a fulfilment of our tradition than as a rejection.

Where is Christ in all this? Too many will read this as a relativization of Christ, as supposing that while Jesus Christ is a source of certain true insights, others have introduced other insights. The goal would then seem to be to step outside of our Christian tradition into the shoes of the scholarly or philosophical observer, identify the elements of wisdom in each community, and weld them into a new whole. I will devote the remainder of this lecturer to explaining why this does not commend itself to me and why, instead, I pursue a Christocentric approach.

I have described what I have observed as the behavior of Christians in their encounter with Buddhists. They are eager to learn and to understand the deepest insgights of Buddhism. What does this mean about their relationship to Christ? Is it to be interpreted as implying that they are now turning away from Christ? Do they feel that they have learned what they can from Christ and now seek another teacher?

Although this is a possible interpretation, it does not fit my experience. To me it seems instead that it is precisely faith in Christ that leads to this openness to new wisdom. The New Testament does not pose itself as the container of all true knowledge. It points forward to what is yet to be learned. To have faith in Christ is not to cling to formulations about Christ developed in the past. It is to trust Christ's calling in the present. Such calling expresses itself far more clearly in openness to learn new truth than in defensive reaction to new ideas.

Faith in Christ leads to love of the other, not fear. Love involves taking the other seriously. To take the other seriously is also to take the way the other understands reality seriously. Readiness to be changed in the encounter expresses faith.

So where do we find Christ in all this? Does "Christ" name only the past historical figure of Jesus or the past event in which he was central? That is, of course, one possible use of the term. But the church has associated Christ with the everliving God as well as with the historical figure. It was the intimate connection of God with the historical figure, what we call incarnation, that causes us to refer to Jesus as the Christ.

It is from that starting point that I have developed my particular Christological proposals. I should acknowledge that, although I am not making explicit reference to his thought, I have come to my formulations through the influence of Alfred North Whitehead. His influence is also present in what I have already said about the complexity of the world and the many patterns to be found in it. But I prefer that you evaluate what I have to say by its contribution to Christian reflection in the light of our religiously pluralistic world than by its sources.

I propose that we identify "Christ" as God's presence, or incarnation, in the world. In our reflection on this matter, let us be guided by what is said of the Word in the first verses of John's gospel. According to John the Word participates in the coming into being of all things. It is particularly present as the life of living things and as the intelligence of human beings. And it is embodied in Jesus, so that we can know its true character through him.

We can then ask what is the characteristic of life and the light that enlightens everyone and then of Jesus that expresses the heightened presence and influence of the Word. I suggest that it is, at least in part, newness. The living is distinguished from the inanimate by its transcending of the causal nexus of the past. A living thing has a principle of self-motion that involves some element of self-determination. This is not possible unless something is present in it that is not derived simply from its past. It is the presence of the Word that provides this.

When we turn to the light that enlightens everyone, we find that this creative novelty is greatly increased. Of course, people remain creatures of habit, largely shaped by their environment. But we are not simply that. We also act spontaneously and influence our environment. To the extent that we are open to God moment by moment, responsive to the call of God's word, our transcendence of the world increases and the Word is more determinative of what we become.

In Jesus we see this carried to a certain fullness. Of course, Jesus remained a Jew shaped by the culture of his day. The Word does not call us into a supernatural condition. But the Word so dwelt in Jesus that he saw his world with a freedom and freshness that remain for us also ever astonishing. Most of us wear glasses fashioned in large part by our self-centeredness and self-defensiveness. Jesus simply saw things as they were and acted on what he saw without regard to the consequences to himself. His teaching remains a call and a challenge to all who encounter it.

Now let us look more closely at what the presence of the Word within us effects. I have connected it with novelty apart from which there is no freedom and no moral responsibility. But the novelty that works in us must always be a relevant novelty. That is why Jesus remained a first century Jew, however deeply he was informed by the working of the Word within him. Still he changed the meaning of what it was to be a first century Jew. The word working within him transformed the world that also entered into him creatively. The way he was a first-century Jew was new.

What the Word did in Jesus it does in some measure in all who are open and responsive to it. We do not detect its working where we have endless repetition of patterns, the continued control of habits, mere cultural conformity. We detect its working where individuals in faith respond to the call of the Word to take some fresh action or to dare to think in new ways.

In the great majority of cases these faithful responses to the Word have their effects chiefly in the intimate sphere of interpersonal relations and personal growth. They are an important part of all Christian maturation. But some of these responses have world-historical importance as well. They involve many individuals responding in mutually supportive ways to the call of the Word in kairotic contexts.

In my reading we can see the presence of God, and therefore Christ, in the transformation of Christianity in its assimilation of Greek wisdom. If Christian thinkers had not done this, there would still have been acculturation of Christianity, but it would have been far more the assimilation of Christianity as one more Hellenistic cult. It is doubtful that such a Christianity would have survived the Roman Empire.

It is important not to suppose that a necessary and desirable creative transformation of this sort was unproblematic. In an ideal transformation, nothing of value is lost. All that is true and valuable finds its place in a larger whole that incorporates other truth and value as well. History is not the locus of such perfection. In the process of the successful transformation of Christianity, elements of value were lost. Some, but by no means all, of these were recovered in the Reformation. Also, Christians became committed to Greek scientific ideas that, a thousand years later, made the acceptance of modern science more difficult. Today, I have already noted, it is chiefly Hellenistic elements in our theology that make the appropriation of Buddhist insights difficult. Clearly the results of creative transformation need, in their turn, to be creatively transformed. But this does not mean that we should fail to discern Christ in the process.

In my reading, the rise of the natural sciences constituted a somewhat analogous challenge. I do not think Christian thinkers responded quite as successfully to this challenge as they had to that of Greek philosophy. There were too many elements of defensiveness. There was too much effort to protect a special sphere in which Christians could maintain their faith while surrendering the dominant domains of thought to science. Nevertheless, there were many creative responses, and Christianity was transformed in necessary ways.

I am hopeful that now, in our encounter with other great religious traditions, we will respond creatively and transform ourselves again through the encounter. I earlier explained in a general way why openness to the other is faithful to Christ. I now want to deepen that with the claim that openness to the other is the working of Christ within us. Christ, as the presence of the Word within us, opens us to the other by offering us ways of integrating what we learn from the other with the wisdom we have received from our own past.

I hope now that you will understand why I do not like the image of standing outside all the traditions, selecting what we appreciate from each, and creating a new synthetic belief system. In some who think of themselves in this way I detect the work of Christ. But if it is Christ who is at work, it is better to recognize and acknowledge this and to claim what one is doing as the transformation of Christianity.

Are there other impulses than Christ that operate in other communities in a similar way. Do Buddhists seek to transform Buddhism so as to appropriate the wisdom of Christianity? The answer is yes and no. Some Buddhists do appreciate some features of Christianity. Some have even copied particular Christian patterns. Some recognize that Buddhism, at least in the form in which it has operated in China, Korea, and Japan, has failed to develop the kind of social ethic needed in the modern world. They propose to learn how this is done from Christianity. Furthermore, many North Americans who have converted to Buddhism have brought into it impulses to social concern that are quite impressive in their expressions.

Hence, it is clear that Christianity is by no means the only tradition that can learn and grow in relation to others. But it would be a mistake to think that what enables others to appropriate from us and from one another is the same as what enables us to appropriate from them. For us it is an openness to the future, with the belief that only then will the truth be fully known. This is combined with the belief that the one through whom we come to learn more is the Spirit of Truth who continues the work of Jesus and is, indeed, none other than the living Christ. Thus the process of being transformed is itself the work of Christ.

For Buddhists the deepest truth has long been known and is realized again and again through meditation. This is the Buddha nature. There is no change at that level. But because this truth is beyond or beneath the level at which science and morality operate, and because in its nature it liberates from bondage to any particular formulations, we are quite free to be open to what others have to teach us at these secondary levels. Whereas in traditional societies this openness often amounted to somewhat uncritical acceptance of the dominant cultural patterns, today it can also mean incorporation of ranges of concern and action from the prophetic traditions of Israel.

Thus Christ opens Christians to the encounter with others, and Buddha opens Buddhists. Again, it is important to see that the fact that they both function in this way does not mean they are simply different names for the same reality. Nor does it mean that the nature and results of this openness are the same in the two instances.

It is my judgment, as a Christian, that Christian openness is, in principle, fuller, that Christianity can assimilate Buddhism more radically than Buddhism can assimilate Christianity. This is because Christ can lead us to recognize the Buddha nature and to call Christians to realize their Buddha nature, whereas I do not think that the realization of the Buddha nature leads to faith in Christ without itself being changed in ways that Buddhism resists. To put this in less directly theological terms, the historical consciousness can include the ontological consciousness in a way that the ontological consciousness cannot include the historical consciousness.

This is not the time or place to unpack those claims. I make them here to indicate the complex interaction between pluralism and the Christian claim of the all-sufficiency of Christ. I am claiming (as a Christian, of course) that Christ is all-sufficient because Christ leads us into being transformed through interaction with wisdom in all its forms. I am even claiming that Christ is, in this respect, unique. Thus the ultimate goad of Christian faith is not to maintain one symbol system alongside others, or one pattern of beliefs and actions alongside others, as pluralists seems to say. Christ as thus understood is far from all-sufficient. The ultimate expression of faith in the true Christ is to be ready to give up every formulation derived from the past so as to be transformed by the opportunities of the present and future and move toward the fullness of Truth.

I hope you will see that if we think of Christ in this way, there is no reason for lukewarmness. Lukewarmness arises when we recognize that there is a tension between our very relative beliefs about Christ derived from the past and the ultimate centrality that we have accorded Christ in our faith. It arises when we suppose that recognizing the religious achievements of other traditions works against our claims for Christ's uniqueness and finality. It arises whenever we find ourselves becoming defensive about the truth and value of Christian teaching. This lukewarmness is healthy.

But it is not healthy to stay with it. The challenge of pluralism is to think through our understanding of Christ so that we see Christ's ultimate importance in ways that do not block our deepest appreciation of other traditions. We can do that as we understand that that appreciation is itself Christ's work, and that Christ leads us beyond appreciation to learning and being transformed by what we learn. A church that sees in this pluralistic age a wonderful opportunity to advance in its grasp of truth and wisdom can recover its conviction and commitment and move forward with excitement and confidence.

I. CHRIST AND THE LUKEWARMNESS OF OUR CHURCHES

The general thesis of these lectures is that one major reason for the decline of our oldline churches is theological and that at least this cause of the decline could be reversed. I am trying to be careful here. There are certainly nontheological causes of the decline as well. For example, the mobility of the population works against stable local churches and therefore against those denominations that have organized themselves around such congregations. The rapid change of liturgical tastes, and especially musical tastes makes it very difficult to provide worship that is meaningful across the generations. This is closely related to the cultural change from orientation to reading to orientation to sound bites. Many people seem to need authoritarian direction in their lives that our oldline churches cannot, and should not, provide. I do not doubt the importance of these factors, but I will not address them because I have little to contribute on these topics.

My opinion is that if we were theologically in healthy condition, we would find ways to respond effectively to our context. Other Christians have done so. For example, while we have been declining, the Pentecostal movement has been growing phenomenally worldwide.

It may seem odd to hold up the Pentecostals as an illustration of how a movement that is theologically healthy can overcome obstacles that greatly weaken denominations that are not theologically healthy. We do not think of the Pentecostals as leaders in the field of theology. Just for this reason, using them as an example should enable me to explain what I mean by theological health.

Clearly, given my example, I do not mean by "health" theological sophistication or correctness of doctrine. What I do mean is strength of conviction, and that in two respects. First, members are convinced that what the community teaches is true. Second, they are convinced that it is extremely important. A community, large or small, whose members have these convictions is likely to be alive, active, and effective in involving others. It is the absence of these characteristics from most of the members of the oldline churches that leads to our lukewarmness. And lukewarmness is the deepest cause of our decline.

I have selected the term "lukewarm," of course, because of Christ's message to the church of Laodicea in the third chapter of the book of Revelation. "I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth." (Rev. 3:15-16) These words attributed to the heavenly Christ seem extremely harsh, considering that the church of Laodicea had done nothing particularly bad. But the point may be that a lukewarm church has no future.

I trust you will not think that I am calling for the abandonment of the oldline denominations and joining the Pentecostals. Most of us could not share the convictions that give them such vitality even if we tried. And this fact points to another measure of a now healthy church's theological wellbeing. Are the convictions that give it health capable of surviving encounter with broader realms of experience and understanding? Since the word "sustainable" is now in fashion, we can ask the question another way. Is the health of a now vital church sustainable?

We in the oldline churches ask this question with particular poignancy. The health we enjoyed at the beginning of this century has not been sustained. It was based on convictions that have not withstood the broader experience and understanding this century has brought us. To us it is evident that Pentecostal theology, in its present form, is also unsustainable.

The phrase, "in its present form," is an important qualifier. Pentecostalism may produce leaders who can deal wisely and effectively with the broader historical, cultural, and intellectual issues to which its present teachings are inadequate. This may lead to a transformation of Pentecostal teaching that maintains its health and renders it sustainable.

Without such transformation no tradition or community can remain healthy indefinitely. Guiding such transformation is a central task of theology. And central to this theological task is the understanding of Jesus Christ. When many church members are convinced of the truth of the transformed teaching about Jesus Christ, and when they are convinced also of the supreme importance of this truth, then the church is healthy. Our sickness, that is, our current lukewarmness, results from the failure of our oldline churches to present a Christology that is convincing to late twentieth-century people in these two ways: truth and importance.

In the early part of this century many members of our oldline denominations were convinced of both the truth and the extreme importance of the Jesus Christ taught in their churches. It was he who proclaimed the coming realm of God and empowered believers to participate in its coming. For this purpose many Christians vigorously and enthusiastically engaged in missionary and evangelistic work. This missional activity was not narrowly focused on the salvation of souls and the establishment of new churches, important as those matters were considered. It dealt also with education, physical and mental healing, social justice, and peace.

Furthermore, the churches' leaders, while not at the forefront of the intellectual currents of the day, had integrated into their thinking the major cultural changes of the nineteenth century, such as the new historical consciousness, the analysis of society in terms of classes, and biological evolution. They were showing that the health of the churches could be sustained in face of challenges such as these. There was no reason to suppose, in those years, that the health of the church could not be maintained in face of new challenges.

What went wrong? Why is a century that started out so promising for our then mainline Protestant denominations ending with our being sidelined? Are we helpless victims of sociological changes? Or have we participated in bringing about this massive decline in numbers, influence, and internal vitality? My view is that we have participated in these losses, and that without analyzing how we have done so and initiating some changes, we are doomed to continued decline.

Let me make clear before proceding that what I am deploring is not the loss of the cultural hegemony we enjoyed in an earlier period. That was not truly appropriate even in those days. Today it is clearly both undesirable and impossible. American society is now radically pluralistic, and any future health will be as one actor among others in a religiously pluralistic setting. I will devote my next talk to this question of faithfulness to Christ as we affirm and appreciate other religious traditions. But history shows that minority status does not preclude a healthy and vital Christian life.

So, what happened?

In the years after World War II we have encountered a variety of challenges. These have taken the form especially of forcing us to see that the Christian record is a very mixed one, that the way we have followed Christ has caused great evil as well as great good. We can recover the conviction that following Christ is our unqualified calling only if we reconceive Christ and what it means to be disciples.

Individuals have proposed reconceptualizations that are very promising. But these have been viewed as their private work. The denominations as a whole have made modest adjustments and sometimes acknowledged past failures. But they have not debated the issues and come to fresh conclusions. Most of their members suppose that the churches are committed to just that teaching that had the negative consequences we deplore. Rightly, they refuse to affirm these teachings with enthusiasm. They are not aware of other ways to understand Christ and discipleship. The result can only be lukewarmness.

I have already mentioned one of the most important challenges, that of religious pluralism. For most of Christian history, most Christians have affirmed Christ in a way that negated the positive value of other religious traditions. As members of these other religious communities became friends and neighbors, this kind of Christology ceased to be convincing. Few are aware that Christ can be conceived in ways that are free from this exclusivism and pejorative treatment of others without reducing Christ's centrality. Accordingly they weaken their commitment to Christ so as to avoid the negative consequences of strong commitment. The result can only be lukewarness. How this can be avoided will be the topic of my second lecture.

But our Christology's damage has not been only in our relations with other communities of faith. In addition, it has led to a dualistic understanding of body and spirit that has in turn caused sexual repression, irrational guilt, and destructive social practices. It has turned attention away from the natural world in such a way as to make us collectively unobservant and insensitive to the ecological destructiveness of our economic practices. It has encouraged an anthropocentrism that has justified the infliction of enormous suffering on other animals. It has accepted and sometimes promoted racist ideas and judgments, and participated in their institutionalization. It has justified and sanctioned patterns of political organization that have included slavery and extreme exploitation of the poor. It has supported the patriarchal structure of human society in ways that have dehumanized women, treating them as instruments for the satisfaction of men's desires and as responsible for men's sins.

This list could be expanded, but it suffices to indicate that the triumphalist histories of earlier times are now quite impossible. If we invite others to join our communities now, we must ask them to share with us in our repentance for past and continuing sins. This is a more difficult invitation than the one we issued when we were quite sure that following Christ is the highest possible ideal and that, despite all its limitations, the church was the community and institution through which this ideal was promoted and realized. It is not surprising that our invitations are now extended with some discomfort.

This situation is now inescapable for thoughtful and sensitive Christians. We cannot simply celebrate our traditions and seek to transmit them intact into the future. Actually, that has never been possible, but it often has been possible to obscure the extent of the changes needed and view them simply as development of what was implicit in the earlier teaching. Now we must acknowledge that what is required is profound transformation. For the sake of Christ we must repent of the way Christ, and faithfulness to Christ, have been understood in the past. Only so can we come again to the conviction of the truth and positive importance of what the church teaches about Christ.

What is called for has in some respects, and in some measure, occurred in our old-line denominations. Of this we can be proud. We have repented of the dualism of spirit and body that has pervaded our thinking and of our sustained repression of sexuality. We have repented of our indifference to the condition of our natural environment. We have repented of our sanctioning and support of racism in all its insidious manifestations. We have repented of our participation in the unequal treatment of women that has pervaded our culture and our church life.

The English word "repent" primarily connotes regret about what we have been doing and ceasing to act in that way. The Greek word "metanoia" which it translates emphasizes turning and going in a different direction. For real metanoia to occur, regret about the past can only be the prelude to a deep transformation. If this occurs, then powerful convictions can form around the new understanding and pattern of action. Unfortunately, this has not yet occurred. We remain in the intermediate state of regretting our past sins and ceasing to commit them without a convincing vision of who Christ is for us today and what Christ calls us to do and to be. In that condition, lukewarmness is inevitable. In the remainder of this lecture, we will review what has happened in the four areas in which repentance has gone furthest, and then consider what true metanoia would involve.

For Protestants, collective repentance is easiest when we can understand it as recovery of Biblical teaching. For example, the sexual revolution forced us to rethink our teaching about the body. When we did so, we saw that the dominant teachings of the tradition were not in harmony with the Bible. Biblical authors did not demean the body by contrasting it with the mind or soul. We came to see that Paul's contrast of spirit and flesh was of two modes of life-orientation, not of ontologically distinct soul and body.

We saw also that the Christian preoccupation with sexual sins was not characteristic of the Bible. Of course, for Biblical authors also human sexuality is one of the areas of life that should be in the service of God, and, to be sure, our failure to respond to this call is sinful. But morality is not primarily focused on the sexual sphere. This is not an area in which the Bible typically stands against the dominant mores of the time. It accepts the polygamy of the patriarchs, but in later times it reflects the assumptions of a monogamous culture. In both contexts it fails directly to challenge the patriarchal pattern that shapes sexual mores. In the New Testament there are atypical affirmations of celibacy, but these are not rooted in negative views of sexuality. Instead, they reflect the tensions between playing a responsible role in family life and being open to the exacting demands of developing a new movement.

Given some such understanding of Biblical teaching, twentieth-century Christians have genuinely regretted that the church has so long communicated the idea that sex is dirty and that its pleasures are to be avoided as much as possible. We have come some distance down this road. What we have found more difficult is the formulation of a positive new sexual morality.

There are many views held by equally committed Christians, but two types are easy to distinguish. One group, having repented of the negative teaching about sexuality, wants to maintain the remainder of traditional teaching largely intact. That teaching was that sexual intercourse should be restricted to marriage. Although there is no systematic exposition of sexual and marriage regulations in the Bible, much of it was written in a context in which for women, at least, the restriction of sexual expression to marriage was strictly required. On the whole, therefore, advocates of this position can claim explicit Biblical teaching in support of their views.

A second group holds that because sexual and family patterns are not the subject of Biblical teaching, the correct Christian response is to move from the basic Biblical understanding of human existence to the formulation of an ethic for our time. Here the central teachings are that sexuality, with the intimacy and ecstasy that accompany it, are inherently a part of God's good creation. Also, all rules should be formulated for the good of human beings and especially for those who are particularly disadvantaged. This good, of course, includes and is shaped by the orientation of all of life to the service of God through the service of neighbors.

In this context, most Christians continue to hold up as an ideal for all who can reach it, a faithful union of a woman and a man who love each other and are open to the gift and responsibility of children. But the fact that this is a particularly blessed pattern does not render all other patterns immoral. For the many for whom this pattern does not work there is always the need to discover what is best. Sometimes it is divorce and remarriage. Sometimes it is a faithful union with a person of the same sex. Sometimes it is celibacy.

Although much is to be said for waiting until marriage to engage in intercourse, this group of Christians does not automatically reject sexual activity before marriage. Indeed, in a culture in which this is the norm, the need may be more for helping young people develop patterns of responsible sexual behavior at this stage of their lives than simply condemning all such activity equally.

To the eyes of the first group, the second appears to be condoning sin and compromising with the world. But those in the second group experience their work more as redefining sin. There is no question but that the sphere of sexual activity is pervaded by sin. Much of current practice is dehumanizing and exploitative. Too much of it is tinged with violence. Some of it expresses male hatred of women. The power dynamics between the partners are often corrupting. Placing sexual gratification at the center of life is unquestionably idolatrous. But this analysis of sin and the effort to identify and support life-giving sexuality can hardly begin when the only line the church draws is between marriage and singleness.

The issues between these two groups of Christians are theologically important. The oldline churches can join with more conservative groups in adopting the former position. When they do so, they do not convince most of the youth in their own congregations to follow their precepts, but they may succeed in qualifying disobedience with guilt. On the whole the traditional teaching appears irrelevant to most of the wider society which then looks elsewhere for moral leadership in this important area. Many of the older members in these congregations go along with the official teaching of their churches but make no effort to transmit it to their own children and grandchildren. This lack of fit contributes to their lukewarmness about the church.

The second group calls for a real transformation of the church's teaching. In my view, if it prevailed, a new situation would emerge. There could be an honest discussion throughout the church, involving also many who have abandoned the church about the wide range of complex issues involved in sexual relations. Discussing these issues as disciples of Jesus Christ would lead to quite different conclusions from those of the sexual revolution. But the conclusions could nonetheless be taken seriously by society in general and by youth in the churches. It would be possible to be convinced about the value and importance of being a faithful disciple of Jesus Christ. One main obstacle to placing Christ in the center of the lives of young adults would be removed. If people could really look to the oldline churches for guidance in this important area of their lives, the possibility of conviction about the truth and importance of the churches' message would be renewed.

In the 1960s Lynn White, Jr. argued that the Western church had encouraged an anthropocentric reading of the Bible. That is, it taught that the end of creation was the wellbeing of human beings, and that all else exists only to serve us. The Western church thus provided a context in which the natural world could be freely exploited for economic purposes. When this exploitation led to consequences threatening to the future of human beings, it became clear that this anthropocentrism required correction. Once again, the issue was a theological one.

The first reaction of many Christians was to attack White's thesis. Often they did so by arguing that the Bible is in fact not anthropocentric. This was a poor argument against White, who had carefully stated that the problem was the way the Bible had been read in the Western church. But this defense of the Bible was a positive step in the repentance of the oldline churches.

As in the case of sexuality, Christians were helped to realize that the anthropocentrism to which they had grown so accustomed separated them from Biblical teaching. This made repentance, in the sense of regret and rejection of past teaching, quite easy for Protestants. In many official statements, Christians reaffirmed the doctrine that God is the creator of the whole world and that the whole world is good. It does not exist only for the sake of human beings. In the language of the World Council of Churches, creation as a whole has its own "integrity."

In this case, it has been even easier than in the former one for Christians to add this doctrine in conformity with the Bible without engaging in significant metanoia. The distinction here is not between conservatives and liberals. Both conservatives and liberals are deeply immersed in anthropocentric modes of thought, and neither, as a group, have transformed these in light of the recognition of the intrinsic value of all of God's creation. When the issue of the integrity of creation is directly raised, there is almost uniform assent. When that issue is not made explicit, the discussion typically proceeds on anthropocentric grounds.

In the local church, the situation is similar. Many congregations celebrate Earth Day. There is a service once a year in which they affirm the importance of the Earth and all its inhabitants. But the liturgy employed the other 51 Sundays is little affected.

Some preachers do touch on the Earth in other sermons. Exploitation of the Earth is added to the list of social concerns of the congregation. Some congregations try to be more ecologically responsible in their purchasing and to engage in recycling.

This regret for past sins, the affirmation of an improved doctrine, and gestures in the direction of practical change are all to be celebrated. They give some hope to outsiders, passionately committed to saving the Earth, that the church is no longer their enemy, that it may become their ally. But these beginning steps do little to overcome lukewarmness.

Alongside these limited changes in the churches are Christian writings that explore the deeper meaning of a changed view of the natural world. These provide a whole new cosmology or worldview that points to a very different way of ordering individual life and society as a whole. Instead of seeing the natural world as one among the social ethical concerns of human beings, it displays the human race as one species of God's creatures alongside others, a species with special prerogatives and responsibilities within creation.

Seen in this way, much that society in its deeply entrenched anthropocentrism has taken for granted appears violent and sinful. The political debates of our time seem miscast. The churches' continuing preoccupation with individuals and institutions seems profoundly shortsighted. a salvation without which our efforts to help individuals can have only a marginal role to play.

Those who view matters in this way believe that Christians are The deep need is for the salvation of the whole world, called into the service of God for the salvation of the Earth. No call has ever been more urgent than this. One who hears this call can never be lukewarm again. But one who hears this call and observes the efforts and concerns of the church from the point of view it engenders, is very likely to be lukewarm about the church.

Obviously, one cannot appeal to the Bible in a simplistic way for support in calling the church to transform its understanding of salvation and the will of God. But if we compare the present vagueness and near irrelevance of what is typically said about salvation and the will of God in our oldline churches today with the call to save the Earth from the destruction we are inflicting upon it, the latter appears more continuous with Bible. We could show how Jesus Christ is the savior of the world. The lukewarmness engendered by vagueness and irrelevance could, in principle, be replaced with wholehearted conviction of truth and importance.

The greatest success story with regard to repentance is with respect to race. In this area repentance has been nearly universal across the whole spectrum of predominatly white churches. Here the fact that the Bible is so clearly against racism has been a great help.

But it is important to acknowledge that for centuries millions of white believers read their Bibles and thought and acted as racists. Some even developed arguments for racism from the Bible. It takes more than the clear words of the Bible to shake people into recognition of the sinfulness of established social patterns from which they benefit. It is only very recently that conservative Biblicists have openly expressed regret for their long support of racist policies and practices. In the United States, the most important step in the erosion of official racism came with the work of Martin Luther King. Of course, this was not the first attack on racism, but it was the one that forced the attention of the entire nation, and especially of the churches, to a topic they had marginalized since the abolition of slavery. And the churches did respond in fairly healthy way. Their opposition to racism was convincing both with respect to truth and importance. Their support of King's crusade for racial justice contributed significantly to national legislation and to a changed climate of opinion.

Whereas care for the Earth is affirmed when the question is asked and forgotten most of the time, racism is now part of the evil against which a wide spectrum of churches struggle. That our denominations have been racist in the past is widely acknowledged, and regret is sincere. There are arguments about whether some policies are racist, but noone defends racism.

Obviously, this does not mean that the churches are now free from racism. Far from it. They do not claim to be. In our culture racial identity and attitudes based on it are so central that there is little prospect of becoming altogether free of them. But we can work, and have worked, to end the overt and obvious discrimination to which these attitudes long gave rise. We can insure that members of minority groups have positions of power throughout our denominations.

Yet even in this area, where there is most to celebrate in the church's response, the metanoia has not gone far enough to contribute significantly to the long-term health of the oldline denominations. Although the Black churches led the nation in a moral crusade and the white churches gave significant support, the church has not led in thinking through to a new vision of our life together in a multi-ethnic society. Our denunciation of enforced segregation of minorities and of unequal treatment is clear. We are not clear as to what should replace this.

During the early days of the civil rights movement the call was for color-blindness. It soon became clear, however, that this was not wise. Generations of slavery and segregation had put Blacks at a severe disadvantage. The majority concluded that justice now required special support of some kind for those who had long been oppressed, not simply ignoring race.

But this could, in turn, be regarded as racist. And often those Blacks who could take advantage of special considerations were those who had suffered least from the history of exploitation and repression. The new policies deepened the divide between middle class and lower class Blacks, creating a leadership vacuum among the latter.

This is not the place to rehearse the continuing problems of race in the United States. The brief comments are intended only to point out that there are basic theological questions raised by our efforts to overcome racism. Should we treat one another simply as individuals, ignoring categorization by race? Or should we treat one another as members of particular communities, some of which are racially or ethnically defined? Are American whites collectively guilty for our enslavement, segregation, and exploitation of Blacks over the centuries? Or is each person responsible only for personal sins? Should one generation receive compensation for injustices inflicted on earlier generations?

As the churches led in the struggle to end segregation and gross discrimination against Blacks, they might have been the locus in which serious reflection on these difficult questions took place. They might thus have exercised a leadership function in shaping the thinking of the nation. Those seriously concerned with this central issue in American society might have seen the church as the place where they could participate in critical reflection guided by Christian commitments.

Nothing like this happened. The positions taken by the church were efforts to speak morally and to be on the side of the oppressed. But they did not express any serious reflection about the difficult theoretical issues the nation faces. When the backlash against quotas came, the church was in no position to speak helpfully. Against gross and egregious evils, moral passion can be a powerful force. But if that is all the church can offer, it cannot call for strong commitment.

The limitations of the churches' opposition to racism are apparent also at the personal level. Treating it simply as a moral issue arouses guilt and efforts to change overt behavior. But guilt does not help in overcoming racist feelings themselves. In complex ways it may make matters worse. Since none of us can endure the pressure of guilt feelings indefinitely, we may become angry with those who cause them in us. The objects of our anger may be the moralists who criticize us; they may also be the objects of our racist feelings. Alternately, we may decide that our racist feelings are nothing to feel guilty about. The rise of extreme forms of white nationalism, and the much wider latent sympathy for this reaction, indicate that this response is not entirely uncommon.

The church has other means of dealing with sin than condemnation. It preaches confession and forgiveness. With less clarity and consistency it preaches that we can overcome the power of sin in our lives, or at least of particular sins. Its fellowship and its sacramental life are intended to have these effects. But for them to be effective in relation to particular sins such as racism, more is needed. This "more" begins with understanding of the rise of racism in societies and in individuals and continues with the analysis of how it can be uprooted. Based on such analysis the church could work to help those who do not want to be racist to free themselves from racist attitudes. Individual Christians have contributed to this "more," but on the whole our oldline churches have offered little help. The kind of conviction about the truth and importance of the churches' teaching that could follow if the there were really helpful teaching and practice in this area is not possible. There is nothing to counter the growing lukewarmness.

The fourth area in which our oldline churches have repented is with regard to gender. This repentance has been, theologically, the most difficult, because it is less clearly called for by the Bible. The Bible does not support the view of sexuality in general as demeaning or dirty. It does not support the idea that the rest of creation has its value and meaning only in relation to us. It does not support any claim for the superiority of the white race. But the Bible does offer support for patriarchal patterns and structures.

For this reason it is likely that progress in repenting of gender discrimination would have been slow had internal pressure within the oldline denominations not been strong. But in this instance, those who resented discrimination were an important part of the life of the churches. Their expectations and demands could not be ignored or dealt with erratically.

The issues raised here were more clearly theological than in the other instances. The churches have to decide between those Biblical teachings that reflect the patriarchal assumptions and contexts of the time and those that call for justice and oppose oppression. Such decisions require theological reflection about how to judge among Biblical themes.

The decision to apply teachings about justice to gender matters was facilitated by fresh study of the New Testament. This led to the recognition that Jesus and the earliest community were far less patriarchal than either the dominant Jewish society of the time or the Christian church from the second century on. Accordingly, it could be argued that the Christian gospel worked against patriarchy and toward the equality of men and women.

The repentance of the oldline churches has been considerable. As ministerial leadership has been opened to women, their numbers have risen dramatically. Equality in numbers and power in the professional leadership of the churches is foreseeable. Some project the less desirable outcome that, as ministry continues to decline in professional prestige, it will come to be typed as a woman's role.

The broader theological ramifications of overcoming patriarchy have also been far more discussed in the churches than have those of sexual, ecological, and racial questions. Again, this is because women constitute a large portion of the membership of the oldline churches and a sufficient number of them are feminists to keep the issues alive. Their reflections have led to some changes other than that of public gender roles.

The most important of these has been with regard to language. Women have persuaded the denominations that the use of masculine language to speak of human beings generally has obscured the role of women. Many congregations have tried to avoid this practice: gender neutral translations of Biblical passages have been made available: and denominational publishing houses have developed policies about the language used in their publications. The change is now affecting the language of denominational hymnals. Although there is resistance to this type of change, it is not admittedly theological.

The far more difficult question is how of speak of God. Although official church teaching is generally that God is not a sexual or gendered being, many believe that God can be rightly imaged only in masculine ways. Despite the presence of some feminine images of deity in the Bible, there is no question but that God is view overwhelmingly in masculine terms. Many Christians cling to the idea of "the heavenly father." To avoid gendered imagery altogether tends strongly to a depersonalization of God that many Christians oppose. The alternative is to balance masculine imagery with feminine. Some progress has been made, but a real change for most members of our churches has not yet occurred.

What would happen if our oldline churches truly developed a postpatriarchal mode of being? It is impossible to say. Perhaps many of their current members would leave. Attachment to a patriarchal deity is strong, and habits of organization and institutional practice developed in a patriarchal context are deepseated. Many men might feel oppressed by the changes, as would some male-identified women.

Nevertheless, one may hazard the guess that lukewarmness would give way to excitement. Women struggling with some success to gain a voice in a patriarchal institution may give real support to that organization. Nevertheless, their commitment to it can only be lukewarm. Women shaping an institution in light of Christian feminist ideals and vision would not be lukewarm.

I have spoken as if this is purely women's work, and there is no doubt that they have played and must play the leadership role if a transformation of this kind is ever to occur. But if the result of transformation were simply a church for women, the postpatriarchal form of Christianity for which we may hope would not have been realized. The vision of a Christian postpatriarchal society, particularly if it is inspired in part by the earliest Christian communities, fully includes men. Furthermore, the liberation of men from patriarchal norms can be as enriching and significant for them as the liberation of women from those norms. If this transformation is to be realized, Christian women and Christian men must work together to listen again to the gospel and dare to embody it in quite new forms.

Although the emergence of a truly postpatriarchal church still appears remote, there is more energy in our oldline denominations for this kind of transformation than for any other. Fortunately, it does not stand in competition with the other forms of repentance of which I have spoken. A postpatriarchal church would have fresh ideas about sexuality that deepen the most positive trends now present in Christian thinking. A postpatriarchal church would experience the rootedness of human life to the Earth in a far richer way and work out its implications for social and economic life. A postpatriarchal church would understand human relationships in ways that would undercut the current grounds of continuing racial feeling.

But such a postpatriarchal community would be truly a church only if Christ remains at its center. Obviously, the Christ who would be at its center would not be the Cosmocrator of the ancient Eastern churches. It would not be the God-man who satisfies the wrathful judgment of the Father by his sacrifice. It would not be the isolated hero who single-handedly overthrows the powers of evil.

The Jesus of the postpatriarchal church would more likely be the central figure in a community of Jewish women and men who participated in a new style of life together, one that profoundly threatened the established patriarchal powers of both Jews and Romans. The Christ of this church would be the Spirit present in that community and in all genuninely human community, a Spirit that extends also to the community with the other creatures who make up our world. This Spirit would be experienced as liberating, healing, empowering, uniting, and challenging. It would be the one power that is capable of saving the Earth and its inhabitants from devastation. Devotion to this Christ in the name of Jesus would be wholehearted.

At present the movement of women's liberation in the church does little to counter the lukewarmness of our oldline denominations. The women who lead this movement are, understandably, more enthusiastic about the movement than about the resistant churches. Those who consciously and intentionally oppose the changes they advocate become less committed to the church as it yields to those changes. Those who go along with the changes without understanding their full implication are halfhearted. Thus far, therefore, all these forms of repentance have contributed to the lukewarmness of the old line churches. My thesis is that it need not be so forever.

In conclusion let me reiterate my central thesis. Our churches are lukewarm because they do not have convincing teachings that are evidently of great importance. The teachings that once carried this weight have been exposed as morally ambiguous and sometimes positively destructive. We have responded by regretting those teachings and making modest changes in behavior and doctrine. The result has been the sense of believing less with less confidence.

There is an alternative -- one that our churches have followed in previous crises. That is to think through the meaning of the challenges to past practices and doctrines to the point where a new vision arises. This new vision can then be understood to be more faithful to Christ than was the old. Christ is seen in the movement from the old to the new, and Christ is seen in the center of the new.

To stop halfway, clinging to the old while making concessions to the demands for change is to insure lukewarmness and continuing decline. To move forward wholeheartedly is a great risk, but it is our only chance for new life. I am convinced it is Christ's call to us today.

Speaking here in the heart of Lutheran country, the question that is my title may not seem meaningful. There are so many healthy Lutheran congregations full of young adults, youth, and children, that the future of oldline churches does not seem in doubt. But the sections of the country in which this is true are shrinking. In California, where I live, the question hits us in the face every time we go to church. We notice both that the congregation is smaller than it once was and also that the average age is much older. There is every reason to suppose that the statistical declines we have already experienced will become steeper as the people of my generation die.

Unfortunately, as we project the future, the situation in California is likely to be more predictive than the one in South Dakota. California reflects in extreme form what the nation as a whole is becoming. In California the population grows, and some forms of Christianity flourish, but the oldline denominations shrink and age. Apparently they were deeply meaningful to my generation, less so to our children, and almost off the map of real options for our grandchildren. Looking with California eyes at the South and the Midwest, where these denominations continue to flourish, one sees there also the seeds of decay.

Perhaps the decline of these denominations is not a calamity. Perhaps we should simply accept that Protestantism is taking new forms in our day. My own denomination, the United Methodist, came into existence in the eighteenth century, helped to bring the gospel to the frontier in this country, took the gospel around the world, and devoted itself at home and abroad to realizing the social meaning of that gospel. Perhaps, it has performed its functions in the providence of God.

There is no Christian reason why my denomination should survive forever. Perhaps our efforts to prolong its life show that we care more about our institution than about God's purposes in the world. Perhaps much the same can be said of some other oldline Protestant denominations.

On the other hand, I am not cheered by the prospect of the demise of the oldline churches. They have played a role that no others, at present, are prepared to assume. We have both proclaimed the gospel and been attentive to new knowledge and understanding. We have exposed ourselves to the intellectual developments of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that have raised fundamental questions about our inherited teachings, and we have rethought much in light of these questions.

We have also adjusted to the reality of religious pluralism. We have recognized the values of other religious traditions and accepted our place as one among others. We have promoted interfaith dialogue and entered into interfaith cooperation and joint work.

In short we have shown that Christian faith is a real possibility for persons who are richly informed and deeply sensitive. To be a Christian does not require a leap away from thought and knowledge. Indeed, it requires of us a quest for truth and for righteousness that leads us continually into self-reformation. We do not see this kind of commitment in the forms of Protestantism that clearly do have a future. Is it not important to avoid the identification of Christianity only with forms that perpetuate ideas and practices that cannot withstand criticism in terms of either the advances of modern thought or the norms we derive from the gospel itself?

It is for such reasons that I, as one who has benefited so much from the work of the oldline churches, ask the question of their future. Must we simply accept their continuing decline and marginalization? Or could they, despite reduced numbers and resources, find an ongoing place in American society from which their distinctive contribution can be made vigorously and faithfully?

II

To answer this question we will first look at the sociological conditions that contributed for many generations to the influential role of these denominations in American society. I will identify only a few factors that are now eroding.

First, the frontier was ripe for evangelization, and some of what we now call the oldline denominations were in position to respond. Evangelization was at the same time civilization. Those on the frontier needed this civilization, and they were prepared to accept the leadership fo the Protestant denominations in this task. Strong loyalties were established.

Second, the communities that were established on the frontier tended to become stable and growing for several generations. The churches maintained a central role in their lives. The rites of passage into adulthood were adminsitered largely by the churches. Giving leadership in the churches was a major way of giving leadership in the larger community.

Third, other parts of the frontier were settled by ethnic enclaves. The major institution they brought with them from the old country was the church. As a result the church often played a much larger role in the lives of the settlers than it had played among them before they came. This was true of many Catholic groups, and it has been a far more important factor for Lutherans than the frontier revivals referred to above. We see the same phenomenon today among Koreans coming to the United States. Many who were not Christians while in Korea join Korean churches here, and the church often becomes central to their lives.

Fourth, the frontier leaders recognized the importance of education. The churches were the chief institutions capable of responding to this need. Education and churchmanship were closely connected in the popular mind. The colleges to which children were sent undertook to broaden their horizons and introduce them to a wider and deeper tradition. But they did not try to alienate them from their churches or from their piety. They aimed at a thoughtful faith and an informed piety. In many ways they insulated the churches from the more radical attacks of leading intellectuals in Europe.

When the controversy over evolution forced the churches to confront a basic problem in the relation of faith and science, Christians were divided. But on the whole, the oldline churches supported the right of scientists to advance human knowledge even when that required revisions of Christian teaching. They were more committed to responsible openness than to unchanging formulations of the gospel.

I have listed sociological factors favorable to the oldline churches that are now eroding. The churches are no longer perceived as a major factor in civilizing society. Stable communities are now rare. European ethnic enclaves have diminishing need to maintain their separate identity. And the church colleges that undertook to hold faith and learning together are now a minor factor in higher education with lessened commitment to faith.

III

There is a natural transition here to what I call theological factors in the decline. More people in the oldline churches are exposed to the corrosive effects of modern thought on the confidence of faith. Much less of higher education supports the integration of faith and learning. Accordingly, whatever is done to achieve this integration must now be done in the churches and their remaining institutions, especially the seminaries.

Meanwhile a whole new wave of criticism has swept over the churches. Often in the past the objections were directed to central Christian beliefs about God and about Christ, because of their incredibility in the modern world. In most instances, basic Christian values were affirmed, and there was some acknowledgment of the positive role of the church in the society. But in the past fifty years, Christianity has been blamed, with some justification, for the Holocaust, for participating in colonial oppression, for arrogance in dealing with other communities of faith, for ecological destruction, for cruelty to animals, for oppression of women, for repression of the body and its sexuality, for suppressing the voices of minority groups and thus participating in their oppression, for the persecution of gays and Lesbians, and many other crimes. Often Christian scholars have led in these criticisms. The oldline churches have been placed on the defensive morally as well as intellectually.

On most of these points the oldline churches have confessed their guilt and have undertaken to repent. To repent means to change course. In each instance repentance requires rethinking of traditional teaching as well as change in church practices.

In most instances, we can find individual Christian thinkers who have analyzed the problems and have proposed new formulations of Christian doctrine that carry through the needed repentance. That oldline churches could move forward, purged and renewed by authentic repentace has been demonstrated. But this remains true only in principle. It could happen in actuality only as hundreds of thousands of members of oldline churches faced the criticisms, studied the responses, and internalized ways of remaining faithful with full integrity.

This is not happening. Just as the need for theological reflection in the churches has grown, adult education has declined in both quantity and quality. On the whole, it functions not to confront believers with the greatest challenges of our day but to protect and reassure them as believers. Whereas in thousands of towns and villages in this country the church was once a center of adult education, now it has been marginalized, and it further marginalizes itself even with respect to its own members. They look elsewhere for their education even with regard to questions of religious belief.

In short, repentance has gone only half-way. We all regret the role of Chrsitian teaching in creating the anti-Judaism that expressed itself climactically in the Holocaust. We all try to avoid perpetuating that anti-Judaism. But few of us have dealt reflectively with all that this entails. Accordingly, even though we emphatically reject calling Jews "Christ-killers", we continue to give most of our members the impression that "the Jews" of Jesus' day rejected Jesus and were responsible for his crucifixion. Even though we do not engage in missions of conversion directed toward the Jews, our normal teaching about salvation continues to imply that those who do not acknowledge Jesus as Lord and Savior are not saved. A few do know that it is possible to confess Christ as our Lord and Savior in a way that does not invalidate the salvation of the Jews through their convenant with God. But few have been helped by their churches to think this through.

The general impression remains that if one is a full-fledged, unqualified Christian, one will hold to an exclusivist understanding of salvation. Yet many people who have friends of other faiths do not believe that they are damned. They continue to identify themselves as Christians, but now qualifying their connection to Christian faith. They cannot be whole-hearted about it, since they suppose that being whole-hearted would lead them to an exclusivism they reject.

The consequence is that the oldline churches do not inculcate strong convictions. Their thoughtful members are more aware of the problems with the Christian beliefs that inform their liturgy, creeds, and hymns than of solutions offered by Christian thinkers. They find reasons to continue to be supportive and active, but they are reluctant, or perhaps unable, to encourage others to share Christian beliefs that they themselves find problematic. Even their children are unlikely to be inspired to shape their lives according to these beliefs. As social pressure to take part in church life diminishes, they are likely to drift away.

As the future of the institution becomes more uncertain, its leaders typically become more cautious. Controversy seems ever more threatening. To avoid controversy is to avoid facing theological issues. It becomes increasingly difficult to introduce theological discussion into congregations.

There is a tendency to blame the decline of the church on the changes it has made to adjust to new knowledge and sensitivity. One remembers the good old days when we proclaimed Christ without the qualifications introduced by sensitivity to implications for Jews. One remembers when one could read and speak in patriarchal language without embarrassment. One remembers when moral teachings about sexual behavior were unambiguous and emphatic. And one supposes that it would be better to return to a time like that. Such repentance as the church has implemented is criticized, and calls for further repentance, for example, for our exclusion and condemnation of gays and Lesbians, are met with stronger opposition. In short, the oldline churches are becoming less able or willing to assimilate new understanding and repent of their sins.

Yet the only form of the oldline church that is worth preserving is the one that is open to all truth and ready to reformulate its faith in light of new learning. Such a church is ready to change its practice to conform to new understanding, but it must do so as a faithful response to the gospel, not as compromise with the world. This can happen authentically only through continuous rethinking and reappropriation of its heritage. In short, it is a major theological undertaking. And theology fades away from the life of our denominations. The situation is not promising.

IV

So we must ask again, do the oldline churches have a future? If, in order to survive, they transform themselves into the patterns successfully developed by other Protestant movements, then the answer is No. That would be the abandonment of their role, not its fulfilment. They would survive then only in name, not in mission or true identity.

The sociological forces that have weakened the oldline churches are unlikely to change. The sprawling suburbs are not like the frontier. Neither are the inner cities. Sociologically speaking, both respond better to forms of Chrstianity that are not ours. Established communities are fewer and fewer as the economic system and modern transportation increase mobility. Ethnic enclaves of groups from Western Europe will be less and less important. Higher education in general is unlikely to help us bring faith and learning together. The oldline churches will not be renewed by sociological trends!

Nevertheless, in this new situation interest in spirituality and in communities of shared convictions has not declined. Indeed, it seems to have burgeoned. As established, culturally supported religious practices and traditional communities have weakened, many people feel the need for some way of dealing with their inner stress and emptiness. Many also feel the need of new forms of community, often for a community based on shared beliefs and lifestyles.

The hunger for spirituality and the hunger for community with those who share convictions that provide direction for life are often found in different people. Some want meditational disciplines to order their inner lives without the constraints of committed involvement with others. Others are prepared to surrender their individual determination of their lives if they can find community support and authoritative leadership.

The interest in individual spirituality has been responded to most widely by meditational practices coming from South and East Asia. In some instances these also draw people into groups in which there is much mutual support. In some of these instances the groups go on to take responsibility for the wider society, engaging in work for peace and the environment, for example. The movement of socially-engaged Buddhists among American converts to Buddhism is particularly impressive.

The most effective responses to the need for faith-based communities has come from conservative Protestants. Some are Pentecostal, others are not. Both offer opportunities for study and fellowship and clear guidance for daily life. They do not deal with intellectual problems or global responsibility, but they provide practical direction with a clear sense of right and wrong. They create communities of mutual support and reinforcement of the basic teachings. They tend to depict the larger community and its ideas more as threats than as sources of new insight. They rarely discuss the criticisms that have been directed against practices stemming from traditional Christianity.

The proper role for oldline churches is not that of criticizing these responses to popular needs. Our task is to devise better ones. We may deeply respect the meditational practices of India and China and admire the results that issue from them, but they do not express the wisdom of Israel as transmitted to us in our Bible. That wisdom also offers ways to still the restlessness of the soul and to find an inner peace that passes understanding.

The route to this peace is not so much through meditational disciplines that lead to unusual states of consciousness, although they need not be excluded, but through a widening of concern that brings an end to the tension between our personal good and the good of the whole. In short, the spiritual discipline most central for Christians is coming to love the neighbor as we love ourselves. The goal is to reach the point where our petition that God's basileia come, that God's purposes be realized on earth as they are in heaven, becomes our most authentic prayer.

Unlike the usual presentation of Asian meditation and its goals, the Christian knows that this expansion of concern is the work of grace. But Christians have always rejected the passivism that could arise from some formulations of this knowledge. Grace works as we are open to its working, and we are open to its working as we are opened by grace. Such attainment as results is not our doing, but it happens, all the same, in and through our practice.

Christians know that a love for others that is not distorted by self-concern is, in the words of Reinhold Niebuhr, an "impossible possibility". But it is not an irrelevant goal. We can grow in genuine caring for others. What matters most to us can become changes that are relatively indifferent to our private wellbeing. For example, we may come to care about the release of others from degrading poverty, the ending of war, or the preservation of the life-support systems of the planet in ways that are relatively separate from any gains to us personally. Or, better, we may come to define our personal gains so that they are not distinct from these gains of humanity and the Earth.

Some of the practices of Christian spirituality can be conducted individually and privately. One may spend time in prayer, asking God's blessing on others, especially on those one is tempted to dislike. One may spend time asking God to help one understand the distorting role of one's own ego even in such prayers. One may spend time simply seeking to be open to the working of the Holy Spirit within one.

But the Christian also knows that one is bound up with other believers. Together we constitute one body of which Christ is the head. To seek to love others as oneself without embodying that love in working and worshipping together with others who are on the same quest does not work. We need one another. We are members of one another. Truly to love others is to love them in the messiness of these relationships, not in the security of privacy. Committee meetings and shared actions are part of the practice of Christian spirituality.

Furthermore, if we truly come to care for the whole world, we cannot be satisfied to relate to it only in prayer and meditation. We need to act. But we cannot act significantly in isolation. We need to act with like minded people. We can be personally involved in a few ventures, but we need to be part of a movement that supports many others in diverse ventures, so that we can take part in healing the world on many fronts even while our own efforts are extremely limited. In short we need the church in order to express our love for the whole.

The Christian also knows that the power of self-deceit is such that we need the help of others to avoid it. How easy it is to believe that one has disinterested concern for world peace as one becomes active in organizations that work for it, when others see that we care a great deal about our role in the organization and gaining recognition for our efforts! How many noble causes are frustrated by quarrels that express the narrow interests of the parties more than genuine differences in belief about how to move forward! Purely private disciplines, at least those of the Christian sort, do not protect us adequately from contributing to these distortions. We need to hear how others, who genuinely love us, perceive what we are doing. Again, we need the church.

We can move from the side of meeting the needs for faith-based community as well. Whereas the danger of many of the responses to the hunger for spirituality is that they are too individualistic and even privatistic, the danger of many of the responses to the hunger for community is that they threaten the personal integrity of those whose needs they meet. A healthy response by the oldline churches would not do this.

The emptiness of isolated existence and the meaningless of a life that has no goals besides individual gain opens people to accept the authority of those who promise answers in exchange for conformity and obedience. The church, historically, has no doubt taken advantage of people's need to gain such conformity and obedience. This may be true of our oldline denominations as well.

But on the whole we have also respected the freedom of conscience of our members and encouraged their personal development. We have held that people should identify with us as their own reflection leads them to share our ideas and our goals. We have tried to explain these persuasively, but not to gain acquiescence through pressure or coercion. The community we want is of diverse individuals, each exercising personal freedom, and supporting one another in that exercise. Of course, this works only as long as these individuals cherish one another and the community among them and are willing to work collectively to achieve goals none can achieve alone.

For such a community to be a Christian church, it must find its unity in Christ. This means both that all acknowledge Christ as their Lord and Savior but also that all measure their individual lives and their shared work by the understanding of God's purposes they receive through Christ. But the authority of Christ is not a restrictive one. Christ's power is the power that empowers, not the power that compels. Participation in the body of which Christ is the head makes one more free, not less.

My argument here is that the traditions of the oldline churches at their best do offer a powerful spirituality and a faith-based community that, in principle, constitute an adequate response to the continuing hungers of our culture. It is not that, if we did our job, other responses would be superseded. There are many who want a spirituality that is purely private and does not involve them with others. There are many who want to be freed from the responsibilities that accompany authentic freedom. But I am convinced that there are also many who would respond with joy and relief if the potentialities of the oldline traditions were actualized in our congregations. Indeed, I believe that where we find vital congregations today, there are many who are finding in them something of what I describe.

V

Nevertheless, there is a large gap between what I am describing and the reality of most of our congregations. I have described communities of persons who find their unity in Christ and are helped to develop a fully Christian spirituality. That would mean that their Christian identity is primary.

Unfortunately, that cannot be taken for granted today in our oldline churches. Many members are businessmen, or professionals, or workers for whom their status as Christians is a second, third, or fourth consideration. Some are primarily committed to good citizenship, and regard the church as one valuable contributor to the community for which they care. For them, to be a Christian may mean little more than to be a Rotarian or a Republican. The church is simply one of the institutions they support. Others are nationalists first, and support the church only as it is a means of advancing nationalist goals. Others have their ideology shaped by economic theories supporting the global market economy, and judge Christian teaching according to its conformity to that. Still others think of the local congregation as bound up with their family history, and, for the sake of their ancestors, continue to take part.

To the extent that the oldline churches are shaped by a membership that is not decisively committed to Christ, they cannot respond well to the challenge they face to. Such people can hardly engage in reflecting on how Christian faith illuminates the issues faced by the church. If answers arise in such reflection that conflict with their primary identities and loyalties, they may leave the church. A church already declining in membership and resources feels in cannot afford to lose such members.

But this is a vicious circle. If we cannot afford to reflect seriously about the meaning of Christian faith in relation to new issues that confront us, Christian faith ceases to be the central organizing principle of our thinking and living. We must turn to other guides for much of our being. Christ inevitably becomes one Lord among others. By failing to engage our members in serious reflection about the meaning of their faith, the number for whom commitment to Christ is central inevitably continues to decline.

VI

I have said the task is a theological one, but in calling for reflection about the meaning of Christ for new challenges, I have not used that word. The term has become a turn-off for most laity and many pastors. If theology is to be renewed as a central part of church life, we must face the question of why it has been marginalized.

One reason is the broad anti-intellectualism of our society. Many people suppose that it is how one behaves that is important, not what one believes. But we should recognize that that itself is a belief the consequences of which are vast and troubling. It is true, of course, as Jesus taught in the parable of the two sons, that it is better to do God's will after saying one will not than to fail to do it after saying that one will. It is also true that we can test the worth of beliefs by their fruits. Practice is immensely important.

But we should frontally attack the anti-intellectualism that dismisses beliefs as unimportant. It is simply false. Behavior is deeply influenced by beliefs, for good and for ill. Much of the greatest suffering in human history has been caused by people acting as their deepest beliefs dictated they should act.

If we go back in our Christian history to the age of the Fathers of the Church, we find good examples. It was great Christian saints, such as Chrysostom, who contributed most to the anti-Judaism that has poisoned so much of our history. There is no reason to question his sincerity. He spoke and acted out of his positive beliefs about the centrality of Jesus Christ.

St. Bernard of Clairvaux contributed greatly to the Christian fervor that led to crusades against the Muslims in the Holy Land. It would be hard to doubt his sincerity. He acted in terms of central Christian beliefs. But the suffering both of the Crusaders and of their victims was enormous.

In more recent times, as belief in the greatness of their nations has become the central motive for so many people, one can cite innumerable instances of the evil consequences of such beliefs. Wars among England, France, and Germany have dominated much of the history of modern Europe and sucked in much of the rest of the world. The imposition of their rule throughout much of the planet also expressed the belief in the greatness of their cultures and the importance of affirming their national glory.

Today many act sincerely for the good of the poor in promoting global capitalism. They genuinely believe that this is the salvation of the world. But those who see the results in the actual lives of people everywhere are painfully aware of the enormous suffering caused by acting on these beliefs. As long as the beliefs are intact, this suffering is hard to acknowledge.

At present our denominations are torn apart by the struggle over homosexuality. It would be foolish to suppose that most of the advocates of the opposed positions are insincere, that their beliefs are unimportant. Some deeply believe that homosexuality is contrary to the intentions of God as expressed in creation itself and as reinforced in scattered references in the Bible. Others deeply believe that the love expressed in Christ demands that the church be inclusive of those whom society excludes and affirming of all regardless of their sexual orientation. For them, such inclusion and affirmation cannot be conditional on lifelong abstinence from sexual intimacy. These differences of belief threaten to tear some of our oldline denominations apart.

The healthy response to such deep divisions would be serious shared theological reflection among persons whose deepest commitments are to Christ. That would entail a genuine effort to find the mind of Christ rather than to justify deeply held beliefs by appealing to Christ. In a community in which such theological reflection was well established, discussion would be genuinely fruitful. But today we do not have the habit of such conversation. We move quickly to arguments that express views that have been shaped by other forces and only subsequently grounded in theology.

VII

Thus far I have blamed the anti-intellectualism of our culture in which the churches share for the inability to respond well to the crises of our time. But the blame falls equally on those of us who are professional theologians. We have defined "theology" as an academic discipline and thus removed it from the church.

This was not done by people of ill will or by those indifferent to the church. It was done by those who cared deeply for the faith and saw the seriousness of the threats coming from changes in the intellectual context. Schleiermacher played an early role. Theology had long been the queen of the sciences, but in the modern world, it was dethroned. It was in danger of being excluded from the university. The irrelevance of Christian thinking to the contemporary scene, already charged against the churches, would be confirmed. Schleiermacher saw to it that theology would be a continuing part of the modern German university.

In the German scene, the identification of Christian theology as an academic discipline did not separate it far from the church. The ministers, at least, were well schooled in theology as a central part of their education. They might not participate in the debates among the theological professors, but many of them kept up with these. Even laiety were involved to some extent. Thus the theological faculties could play the dual role of guiding the church's thinking and engaging centrally in the life of the universities. German scholarship, including German theological scholarship, was the wonder of the world.

In the United States, also, in the nineteenth century theology as taught in universities remained close to the churches. As late as the first half of the twentieth century, college teachers of religion and seminary professors were often ministers who distinguished themselves by their reflectiveness and scholarly habits. The issues they discussed in higher education were not far separated from those that were of concern in congregations.

But after World War II the situation changed. There had long been admiration for German scholarship, and a number of professors well before that time did much of their study in Germany. They brought back to the United States a knowledge of the German tradition that showed up the simplicity and naivete of much that had transpired in this country. As seminaries expanded dramatically after World War II, their most distinguished and influential faculty looked to German scholarship. The history of modern theology that they taught was basically the history of German nineteenth- and twentieth-century theology.

At that time this culminated in what was broadly called Neo-orthodoxy. The spectrum of German-language positions from Barth and Brunner to Bultmann and Tillich defined the choices for American seminary students. If the story of American theology was taught at all, it was as a minor elective. To take this seriously was a sign of lack of sophistication.

This introduced a break between theology and the American churches. For a while the excitement of the German debate swept up a good many pastors, so that there was some theological ferment among them. But it was extremely difficult for them to relate the German debates, highly relevant to church life in Germany, to their American congregations. Lay people might be willing to study theology, but the theology they studied did not arise out of their own experience or clearly relate to it. For American Christians, theology had been redefined as an academic discipline with only tenuous relations to their individual or ecclesiastical experience.

American theologians continued to have a significant role to play. The history of European thought in relation to which they posed their problems and did their research was shared by other scholars and intellectuals. These could not look to the churches for serious grappling with this important history, but academic theologians could participate respectably in intellectual discourse. This is important for the future of Christianity.

Although I believe that it is the grafting of the work of American theologians on the history of German, or Central European, theology that has most clearly defined the meaning of theology, and its irrelevance to the average American Christian, this is not the only role played by professional theologians. For example, some have devoted attention to the history of their own denominations, often with special emphasis on their founders. The churches find these scholars useful when they make official statements or engage in interchurch conversations. Among Lutherans, I believe, this kind of theology plays an exceptionally large role, whereas it is peripheral among United Methodists.

But even this kind of theology separates it from the lives o church people. Only those who can engage in careful historical study can participate in it. Church people may listen with interest to the results, and may be able to apply some of them. But it is someone else's work, that of someone with scholarly authority, that they are applying. It would not make sense to have lay people engage in a debate about the details of Luther's teaching. This kind of theology remains an academic discipline in which a Christian can participate only by extensive specialization in academia.

VIII

There is a deep irony here. In the initiation of Protestantism there was great concern that the basis for theological reflection, the Bible, be available to all believers. Implicit faith, that is, the acceptance of the authority of others to determine what one believed, was not enough. Christians were to form and formulate their own convictions. This applied to lay and clergy alike.

On this point, surely the Reformers were correct. Yet for fifty years we have acquiesced in the professionalization of theology, leaving most Christians either with naive and unexamined notions or an implicit faith in what the church teaches. It is this abandonmnet of a cardinal principle of the Reformation that I blame most for the decay of our oldline denominations.

Can we change this? If changing this meant introducing all Christians to the history of professional theology, then we cannot. If it meant studying the history of their denominations and the thought of their founders sufficiently to participate in debates about these, then we cannot. But theology does not have to mean either of these academic activities, valuable as they are in themselves.

That is why, for me, the redefinition of theology is so crucial. My redefinition is radical against the background of recent professional theology, but not in relation to what theology has meant in the overall history of the church, and especially of Protestantism. I define "theology" as "intentional Christian thinking about important matters." I believe all serious Christians can be theologians in this sense, and that being a theologian is a part of the vocation of all Christians.

To unpack the definition, I will begin with the last phrase. It is intentionally open-ended. Some issues are important to some Christians and not to others. For those for whom they are important, intentional Christian reflection about them is theology. Of course, this is a matter of degree. The definition suggests that it is best for theological thinking to concentrate on the most important matters as judged by an individual or by a group collectively.

The topics of theology, then, may well be God, Christ, and the church. These are indeed important matters. But the topics may also be urgent ethical issues such as human rights, medical care, abortion, environmental protection, or world peace. Or they may be highly theoretical topics such as the ideology that supports global capitalism. One very important change needed in the way theology is understood is recovery of the great breadth of topics treated in classical theology. Psychological, social, political, and economic questions are not less theological than are God, Christ, and the church. Lay Christians may contribute more on many of these theological topics than clergy or academic theologians.

For reflection on any of these topics to be Christian theology, the reflection must be intentionally Christian. It is not enough that the thinker be a Christian. Sometimes because of the thinker's Christian faith, what is thought about these topics is influenced by that faith. But the ability to compartmentalize is enormous. When a Christian has been socialized through graduate education into an academic discipline, the influence of faith in the reflection that follows is often exceedingly marginal. However sincere that Christian's faith, what she or he says will not be theology.

That is why it is so important to understand that theology is intentionally Christian thinking. When one is reflecting about a psychological, sociological, political, or economic issue intentionally as a Christian, one submits one's judgments to Christ. That does not mean, at least if one understands Christ as I do, that one takes the established facts less seriously or is less concerned to be fair and honest in dealing with them. Quite the contrary. It does not mean that one's thinking will be less disciplined than that which makes up the academic "disciplines".

On the other hand, it is likely to mean that one is critical of the thinking done in established disciplines. It may mean that one presses harder for the assumptions underlying a discipline and engages those assumptions critically. It may mean greater suspicion of disciplinary claims to objectivity. It may mean more attention to the subjectivity of the people who are studied and whose fate is being decided. It may mean that one brings understanding from one discipline to bear on decisions made in another. It will certainly mean that one brings questions and insight formulated out of the wisdom of the Bible and the Christian tradition to bear.

Engaging the academic disciplines and the professions is an important role for lay Christians, especially those who are involved in those disciplines and professions. But there are other questions that are more accessible. Many Christians are perplexed about how to understand the relation of Christ to Jews or Buddhists. They can begin their intentional Christian thinking there. Others are troubled that so often it is good people, sincere believers, who suffer. They can begin their thinking there. Others may wonder about the efficacy of prayer. They can begin their thinking there. Still others ask what happens to us at death. They can begin their thinking there.

Whether one has read what others have written on any of these topics is not the first consideration. One can articulate whatever opinions one holds and examine them as to whether they are conformal to the mind of Christ. One can also examine how one seeks to identify the mind of Christ and become critical about that method as well. In this way one can become a responsible theologian without benefit of the opinion of others. Becoming a good theologian is quite different from becoming a good scholar.

Nevertheless, we need one another. The questions of others help us to see problems with our thinking. The opinions of others cause us to rethink. The perception of others can help us to see where we are not making clear and honest connections. Theology works best as a group project.

Furthermore, we can benefit greatly from the work of scholars. Learning something of the history of the discussion of our topic widens and clarifies our issues. It can point out the limitations of our own solutions and suggest new avenues of thinking. Encountering solutions proposed by theologians can also stimulate and challenge. In short, intentional Christian thinking among all Christians can build bridges to professional theologians. It may be surprising how many of them will happily cross the bridges to join the broader theological task.

To renew theological thinking in the church will not immediately end its statistical decline. It may even drive out some who are now members. But it is my conviction that in the long run, and even in the relatively short run it would reinvigorate the church and develop a core of membership that can carry the church through its decline and provide a basis for new health and even growth. The kind of churches that would emerge would carry forward the best of the tradition of the oldline churches. These churches would have a future.