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The Church and Sustainable Living

A remarkable change is occurring in the attitude toward religion and the churches on the part of environmentalist scientists and philosophers. Carl Sagan who once expressed quite negative attitudes toward Christianity has begun to work closely with the churches. Quite recently, a new book by the environmentalist philosopher, Max Oelschleger, testifies to this shift. The book is entitiled Caring for Creation: an Ecumenical Approach to the Environmental Crisis. (Yale University Press, 1994)

Oelschlaeger tells us of his own awakening to the crisis in the heady time of the first Earth Day. At that time he was taught and believed that Christianity was hopelessly anthropocentric and alien to the vision that was needed. He thought out of that assumption for years. But he came to realize that the national life operates in terms of an economic paradigm that is inimical to the changes that are urgently needed. The only locus in which alternative values and vision are nurtured is the religious community. Hence he examined the teachings of Judaism and Christianity more closely. And there he found the fundamental belief that is needed, the conviction that we are to care for the creation. (Because of the nature of this magazine and my own role as a Christian theologian, I will speak only of the church in what follows.)

In one sense, we Christians who have long been concerned about these matters could dismiss Oelschlaeger for his simplicity. But we would be wrong to do so. Just because he has looked at us from without, with no bias in our favor, we can have greater confidence that what he sees is there to be seen. We in the church are deeply aware of our divisions and are often caught up in mutual criticism. He is struck by our unanimity on the crucial core of teaching. The ecumenism of which he speaks cuts across all of our usual boundaries. We all teach that the world is God's creation and that we are called to care for it. This teaching by itself, if taken seriously, provides, in Oelschlaeger's view, an adequate ground for the environmental concerns he shares with us.

Reading this book, a church insider is struck by the lack of attention the author gives to the enormous resistance within the churches, liberal and conservative, to taking our own teaching seriously. He turns to us with a hope that many of us have difficulty keeping alive within ourselves. If we are the great hope for the salvation of the Earth, we wonder whether there is any hope at all!

I am reminded here of the quip of Reinhold Niebuhr. He said that the church is like Noah's Ark. We could not stand the stench inside if it were not for the storm outside. In the terms with which Oelschlaeger views us, we might be despairing of our poor embodiment of our own values if it were not that apart from those values and their implementation there is no hope for the Earth. We, at least, do affirm those values, and haltingly, inconsistently, and often in distorted ways, try to embody them and encourage others to do so. Sinful as we are, we do have a criterion by which to recognize our sinfulness.

Perhaps the hope with which outsiders are beginning to turn to us may fan the sparks of healthy activity within our churches. Perhaps it will encourage us to try once more to become what we already are -- a community of faithful people. Perhaps it will help us to break free from mutual recriminations and to join together in reaffirming the elemental features of our shared faith that can generate and support the attitudinal changes that are so badly needed in the whole of society.

The most important contribution of the churches, called for by those who newly look to it with hope, is to affirm the values of our tradition. But, of course, more is needed than simply verbal repetition. It is important that these values be taken seriously, and that means that they inform individual and corporate life. Unless this happens in the church, it is unlikely that it will happen in the body politic. What would it mean for the church, local and ecumenical, to take its own teachings seriously?

Churches have always existed in a tension between the values they affirm and the values of the societies within which they exist. This is inevitable. Christians have created special institutions, at times, to more fully embody Christian values. The monastic orders are the most important example. But they cannot evade the tension, and the Reformers believed that all Christians, and all their institutions, should live in the tension rather than even attempt to escape from it.

In the modern world the tension has been between the values of the Bible, on the one side, and the values of nationalism and the economic order on the other. Of these latter, the economic order has increasingly assumed primacy. The tension within the churches is between values based on caring and service and values based on the economic paradigm.

We see this tension concretely in ministry. On the mission field, workers were paid according to their need. But in settled churches in the United States, churches paid what they could afford and what was required in order to compete for the ministers they wanted. The determination of ministers' salaries by the economic paradigm has hardly been disguised.

On the other hand, the appeal to lay people has been chiefly in terms of caring and service. And tens of millions have responded sacrificially with money and time. The economic paradigm has been resisted, in general, successfully.

The tension appears now increasingly as declining churches compete for new members. According to Biblical values, the church exists to serve those in greatest need. According to the economic paradigm, those feeling the need of what the church can offer, shop around to find who does the most for the least. Some congregations continue to order their lives to the service of human need both within and without the congregations. Others enter the market competition for members in ways that set aside much of the church's historic mission.

With regard to the Earth, the economic and dominant modern theological paradigms have been all too similar. Both have been anthropocentric. But when economists have been challenged with regard to their paradigm, most of them have defended it and charged their critics with eccentricity. When the church has been challenged with regard to its anthropocentricity, it has, on the whole and in principle, repented with respect to its teaching. It has recognized the opposition between its deeper convictions and the anthropocentric formulations that have done such damage. Thus the tension noted above between the values affirmed in the church and the dominant economic paradigm reappears here.

The church as yet hardly knows what it means to implement its renewed teaching of caring for creation. In exploring its meaning, it begins, quite rightly, with its liturgy. Values not expressed in the liturgy are unlikely to be expressed in life. Thus far, caring for creation has been upheld chiefly in special liturgies for special occasions. We have a long way to go before it is fully integrated into the weekly worship of most of our congregations.

The next place where we can find some emphasis on caring for creation is in the teaching of children. Even during the long decades in which this teaching almost disappeared from adult worship and study, it maintained a foothold with children and youth. Camping programs have been particularly important in this respect. Now, with heightened awareness of its importance, this element in youth education has increased. It should be possible to continue it into adult education.

When it becomes a basic part of our regular worship and educational program, the tension between its implications and the normal life of the congregation, as well as the normal lives of the individual members, will be more keenly felt. Our history shows that this does not guarantee that change in practice will follow, but it does offer hope. Congregations will recognize the unsustainable character of the society into which they are so fully integrated. They will also realize how difficult it is to extricate themselves from the ways of life that express the economic paradigm rather than the Christian one.

Nevertheless, even in this preliminary stage of raising our consciousness, we know that some changes are possible because here and there they have already occurred. Many churches have participated in, or even sponsored, recycling and tree planting programs. Some have taken part in Earth Day celebrations or in walks to raise money for environmental causes. Others have held local fairs or participated in community ones.

More important but less common has been consideration of environmental matters when constructing church buildings. But as we become more conscious of these matters as part of caring for creation, we can recognize the need so to build as to free our congregations from dependence on fossil fuels for heating and cooling. This is not impossible with new construction. Although the problem with older buildings is more difficult, when remodeling is called for, or when relandscaping is possible, some movement in this direction can be made. We can also use much less electricity, partly by reducing unnecessary lighting, but chiefly by using far more efficient fixtures and appliances. In the long run, these ways of reducing our use of exhaustible resources and our contribution to pollution also save us money, and this can be used to meet human needs that are more urgent than our comfort.

There is an intrinsic value in showing our concern for creation in the way we build our churches. There is also an educational value for the community. Church members who think about how the church can become less unsustainable, will think also about their own homes and businesses. A church that successfully embodies new technology in this respect will encourage other institutions to do so as well.

Churches can encourage their members to take venturesome steps. The New Road Map Foundation in Seattle has found that many people are willing to plan their lives quite concretely around service rather than around wealth. It is a sad commentary on the churches that this actualization of our values has come from a quite independent organization. But we can enormously increase the visibility of this effort to awaken us from the economic paradigm and reorient our lives. The program is quite simple: encourage people to consider what they really want out of life and, if this is not money, to live frugally, saving as much as possible, and then financing a life of service out of these savings.

Churches can also encourage reflection about more communal or cooperative life styles. One model that deeply embodies Christian values is a group of families pooling resources so as to reduce expenses and to free some of the adults to work as full-time volunteers for social and environmental causes. The affirmation and encouragement of the larger church community can do much to sustain such experiments as they find their way through a maze of difficulties.

Meanwhile the church can also be a center of thought. Although it does not command the resources in this respect that are possessed by many other institutions, it does offer its own perspective. The quantity of thought is of little worth, if it operates from perspectives that do not take account of the Earth and the needs of the poor. Thinking from the perspective of caring for creation in both its human and natural aspects, if it is serious and clearheaded, can be of immense value. Since so little of this occurs in other institutions, the church is called to take the lead.

Such thought will inevitably be critical. Our existing institutions, including the church, have not been structured around caring for creation. Hence when they are viewed, beginning with the church itself, from this perspective, the threat to the Earth intrinsic to their operations can be exposed. The need for Christian thinking of this sort is critical.

Since our society operates primarily out of the economic paradigm, the critique of that paradigm and the way in shapes our institutions, beginning with the church, is especially urgent. For the church to support an alternative paradigm is not enough. As it articulates the Biblical paradigm more clearly, it must also make explicit what is wrong with the economic one. It is as true today as ever that we cannot serve both God and mammon. Yet as long as mammon rules the public world, it is possible only for a few individuals to serve God purely. Mammon's hold must be challenged and broken if the church is to be truly the church. It must be broken also if the Earth is to be saved from continuing degradation.

Practical Theology for Creative Ministry

All theology should be practical. Indeed, for any belief or teaching not to make a difference is for it not to be genuinely Christian theology. Theology is for the sake of God and God's world through the service of the church.

To some extent, everything I know of that is called theology does have some practical implication. Yet for an increasing part of theology, this practical implication is quite indirect. Much theology has become an academic discipline engaged in resolving problems generated in the history of that discipline rather than by the more obvious and immediate needs of the church. This theology has scholarly and intellectual content and has maintained some place, a small one, I fear, for theology in the intellectual world and the university. The lack of a tradition that has status in the university would have practical consequences of considerable importance. Furthermore, this tradition spins off ideas from time to time that have a quite direct connection to the church and its immediate needs. Hence the academic tradition of theology is practical.

Nevertheless, there is a wide range of practical needs in the church that are not well served by academic theology. Most of the calls for practical theology have had these needs in mind. Because of the remoteness of the academic discussion from the pressing concerns within the church, the church has in fact looked elsewhere for solutions to its problems. Pastoral counseling looks to psychology; church administration, to management theory; Christian education, to general educational theory.

Worse, the discussion of beliefs within the church is usually little informed by the extensive scholarship on these topics. Naive and uncritical ideas are identified with the teaching of the church, and lay people struggle with their obvious limitations and paradoxes with little help from church professionals. Thus, while the academic discussion moves off into sophisticated irrelevance, lay theology is dominated by erroneous notions of the Bible and Christian tradition and a lack of freedom and authenticity.

Neither academic theology nor popular Christian thinking typically deal with the most urgent issues facing humanity and the world. Of course, both professional and lay Christians have opinions on these matters, but it is rare that these opinions are explicitly and clearly grounded in a reasoned Christian faith. On the whole they reflect other associations of the believer and other sources of authority than the Christian tradition. Or else they are based on narrow and arbitrary uses of the tradition.

I am describing the prevailing situation in the oldline Euro-American churches. To what extent it applies in Korean Protestantism I am not sure. There is greater vitality and lay participation in the Korean churches than in the Euro-American ones. How much this expresses itself in a responsible practical theology I do not know.

As I express my hopes for the renewal of practical Christian thinking in the Euro-American churches, I hope you will consider the similarities and differences with the Korean and Korean-American ones. I believe that the chance of moving toward the renewal for which I call may be greater in the Korean and Korean-American churches than in the Euro-American ones, but I do not know. I also believe that Korean and Korean-American Christians may be in a better position to critique my proposals than are my fellow Euro-American Christians.

My hope for the twenty-first century is that Christians will learn to think as Christians about all the important matters that concern them. We would think as Christians about our personal spiritual lives, about what we do with our money, about our sexuality, and about our vocations. We would also think as Christians about our churches, about how we educate as well as the content that we teach, about how we relate to one another in the church, about how we worship. We would also think as Christians about the societies in which we live, their social, political, and economic structures, about the institutions that shape them, and about international affairs.

To do this means that first we must reflect about what it means to think as Christians. We must overcome simplistic views of what Christian thinking is. It is not a matter of finding proof texts that seem relevant to a current issue or discovering a traditional teaching on a topic. On the other hand, it is not simply asking what the most general Christian principles, such as love, require. It involves serious inquiry about the diversity within the scripture and within the tradition. It involves critical consideration of the Christian way of appropriating scripture and tradition. It involves eagerness to learn from other sources. It involves openness to the present leading of the Holy Spirit. It also involves listening to one another in love and seeking consensus. But finally it involves personal decision and taking responsibility for the convictions that emerge.

Christians who have thought about matters of importance to the church in this way have a power and authority lacking to those who do not think. They can give leadership, not by virtue of their position or status, but by virtue of their wisdom. Congregations which encourage this kind of thinking and are prepared to be guided by its outcome have a fullness of Christian reality that is lacking to those that operate out of conventions and customs.

None of this insures that thinking Christians will not err. The recognition that we may be wrong is one mark of thinking Christians. We know that we are creatures with limited understanding and vision. Accordingly we are ready for more light that will correct us, and we are acceptant of the fact that others, who are eqully thoughtful and sincere, will come to different conclusions. We will see such differences as an opportunity for further growth rather than a threat to unity.

But this does not mean that thinking Christians are lacking in strong convictions or hesitant to act upon them. It is the human condition to be fallible. But it is the Christian calling to act as best we can in light of our present understanding. If this forces us to oppose other thinking Christians, we will do so at the same time that we seek to be reconciled to them. We will seek to contain even our opposition within the fellowship of the church.

There are limits to the diversity of positions that the church can encompass without losing its soul. But these limits are not to be defined in terms of predetermined conclusions of thought. Spelling out on the basis past thought the limits of what current thinking may generate, blocks the emergence of new vision and wisdom. The limits come according to the willingness of persons to be open to the scriptures, to tradition, to wisdom that comes from other sources, to one another. Those who simply insist on their own opinions, unwilling to test them or to hear the opinions of others, thereby place themselves outside of Christian community. I do not mean that we should drive them outside the church. But I do mean that the church should make it clear that they are called to openness, that rigid clinging to particular beliefs is not Christian faith. We can include them within our fellowship in hopes that they will grow in faith and therefore in the ability to participate with others in the community of the church. But the beliefs to which they cling cannot have equal status in the church with those that come into being through Christian thinking. We cannot allow this rigid spirit to delimit what is acceptable in the church.

Another limit comes at that point where critical thinking leads someone to cease to identify with the community of faith. Such a person usually leaves the church so that there is no need for the church to draw the line. If the person does not leave, this ordinarily means that the loss of Christian identity is not settled or determined. The community may be able to help that person recover such identity. Especially if a person loses Christian identity because of a narrow and rigid definition of what is involved in being Christian, a thinking church may be able to help her or him through such a crisis and achieve a deeper Christian identity.

I do not want to underestimate the risk involved in Christian thinking. However inclusively we understand the faith, we live in a society in which much of the best thinking attacks and challenges that faith. To be ready to learn from that thinking involves the risk that we will come to share its objections to faith and find them convincing. Many people have thought their way out of the church. Becoming a thinking church will not put an end to those losses.

On the other hand, I believe that it will greatly reduce such losses and will in fact prove an evangelistic tool. If the church encourages critical thought, many who now leave it will find it a true home. Since I am convinced that authentic Christian thinking will be more critical, more open, more inclusive, and more radical that the thinking encouraged elsewhere -- such as in the university -- it will also be more satisfying to those who seek truth and wisdom. The ancient church out-thought its competition in the Mediterranean world partly by critically appropriating much of what other communities taught. We are challenged today to out-think the other institutions of society, to show that when issues are approached from the perspective of faith they can be treated more adequately, more practically, more holistically, that when they are approached in any other way.

How could we renew Christian thinking in the church? First, of course, we have to want to do so. We have to encourage questioning rather than silence it with appeals to accept beliefs on authority. We have to let people know that their opinions count, as long as they are willing to test them in a Christian way. We have to create a context in which growth in thinking is prized.

Much would change in this direction if congregatiaons gave as much attention to encouraging Christian thought as they now give to encouraging Christian fellowship, Christian prayer, and Bible study. This would mean establishing groups within the church whose task was to help one another grow in Christian thinking. It would also mean that as these groups matured, their help would be sought by the congregation as a whole in clarifying the mission of the church and its way of realizing that mission.

Judicatories should also establish groups to think about the mission of those levels of church life and how they can be fulfilled. There are many thoughtful Christians who find the life of local congregations boring and the tasks they are asked to fulfil in those congregations unchallenging. Some of them would be inspired to take their faith with a new level of seriousness if they were asked to place their best gifts at the service of the church.

All of the institutions of society, all of the professions, operate with assumptions about human beings, human communities, the natural world, and their responsbilities. Those who are shaped by these assumptions rarely reflect upon them. Christians could and should take the lead in bringing these assumptions to consciousness and critically considering them. Christians have the opportunity and the duty to critique these assumptions and offer others that seem more suitable in light of Christian faith. In principle this can lead to reforms and redirections throughout society.

The Christians who can best do this are not ministers and professional theologians. They are lay people who are immersed in these institutions and professions, who know their strengths and their problems, who have an inside experience of the tensions between their faith and their vocation. These Christians can be helped by working together to clarify the assumptions underlying their institutions and professions and to begin the process of critical evaluation. I would like to see the church in the twenty-first century lead society in such critical self-examination and in reconstructing itself on more realistic and more compassionate grounds.

I am discouraged about the direction of the Euro-American churches and Euro-American society today. I am convinced that we have the resources to do better, but I see us giving priority to institutional maintenance in ways that are ultimately suicidal. A church with strong convictions and a keen sense of mission can come alive in the twenty-first century. A church that avoids controversy and uses gimmicks to gain members will die.

I see great vitality in Korean churches. I do not know how sustainable that vitality is. In the Korean-American churches it seems to be hard to transmit this vitality to second and third generation youth. I see a danger that the churches will divide between those that rigidly maintain the doctrines and practices of the past and those that enter a decadent mainstream. But I also see the possibility that the Korean-American churches could become thinking churches, which would guide their own people in understanding themselves in their unique situation and understanding also their calling within it. They can provide a perspective on the larger society as a whole that may prove illuminating and renewing to that larger society. They could become centers of health not only in the Korean-American community but in the society as a whole.

Dear Stephen,

From your letter, I gather that my presentation should be no more that twenty minutes. That allows twenty minutes for your interpretation. The attached paper may be a bit too long. I'll try it out.

Meanwhile, however, I thought it might help you to have this in advance. I hope it is more or less what was wanted.

I look forward to visiting with you en route to LA Wednesday. We can make last minute adjustments then.

Sincerely,

Process Theology

l. The Origins of Process Theology

Most theology in the United States has been imported from Europe, sometimes from Great Britain, but more often from the continent. However, from time to time indigenous movements have developed. Jonathan Edwards in the eighteenth century established the New England theology, closely related to the Great Awakening. A major focus was on Christian experience, especially on conversion. It took root and can be traced for a century as a major element in Christian thought in this country. In the nineteenth century Horace Bushnell developed a quite independent and original way of thinking that was also widely influential. It also focused on Christian experience, this time on growth into Christian maturity rather than on the crisis of conversion.

Around the beginning of the twentieth century there was a flourishing of indigenous thought. William James, John Dewey, and Charles Saunders Peirce are among the most important figures. For this group, too, experience, was central.

Although the term "process philosophy" did not come into use until the 1950's, retrospectively this group can be claimed for the tradition. Its shared characteristics, in addition to a focus on experience, are its pragmatic, pluralistic, relativistic, holistic, and naturalistic tendencies. Its members were radical empiricists, that is, empiricists who believed that experience is by no means limited to, or originated in, sensation.

During the same period, within the churches the pragmatic temper expressed itself in the social gospel. This was the response of sensitive preachers in northeastern and midwestern cities to the consequences of industrialization. The exploitation, especially of immigrant labor, was blatant, and many preachers were no longer willing to speak only of the personal salvation of their flock or of the need of the newcomers for conversion. They were determined that the church support the efforts of the exploited to organize and secure decent conditions. They read their Bible with new eyes and saw that their concerns followed from those of the Hebrew prophets. They located Jesus' teaching of the Kingdom of God in this tradition, and gradually they developed their Christian convictions into a theology. The best expression was Walter Rauschenbusch's A Theology of the Social Gospel (1917).

There was a Baptist theological school in Chicago oriented to the social gospel and sensitive to the radical empiricist temper. When John D. Rockefeller decided to establish the University of Chicago, he built it around this seminary. Its president, William Rainey Harper, was the first president of the university. The Divinity School of the University of Chicago was for at least sixty years the place where the tradition later called process theology developed through its several stages.

The first stage emphasized the socio-historical method. Shailer Mathews and Shirley Jackson Case understood Christianity as a social movement, and they applied to it the techniques they would use to study any social movement. They showed how it had adapted to changing social conditions in the past. They saw their own context as one in which democracy and science were dominant. The theologian's task, in their view, was to reformulate church teaching in a way appropriate to that context.

By the l930's the social gospel was losing its momentum, and the need for theological credibility was becoming more pronounced. This led to a shift of emphasis from historical to scientific methods in the study of religion. Psychology of religion and sociology of religion became prominent. A scientific or quasi-scientific method was needed for theology as well. Henry Nelson Wieman and Bernard Meland emerged as the leaders of the effort to understand Christianity in terms of radical empiricism. Wieman defined God as the process of creative interchange discernible in human affairs. This alone, he believed, makes for the growth of human good. He called for trust in that process. He organized students into groups, something like the later human potential growth groups, in order that they might actually experience the working of God in their lives. Meland retained a certain distance from this, emphasizing the subtle role of religion in the total cultural life and calling for the culture as a whole to become more appreciatively aware of the spiritual depths in what is happening.

Charles Hartshorne joined the philosophy department at Chicago soon after Henry Nelson Wieman came to the Divinity School. His greatest scholarly achievement at that time was his editing, together with Paul Weiss, of the collected works of Peirce. Although he had studied in Germany with Husserl, his own commitments were much more informed by the community of American thinkers mentioned above, and especially by Peirce.

The American tradition did not rule out metaphysics in the way that the Kantian tradition had done. Yet it did not emphasize it either. Nevertheless, metaphysics was Hartshorne's passion. The rootage of his metaphysics in radical empiricism led to important disagreements with traditional views, but from this different starting point he dealt with the whole range of traditional issues. Hartshorne called his metaphysics "neo-classical."

Both Wieman and Hartshorne had been influenced by Alfred North Whitehead, the British mathematician who became more and more a philosopher, especially after coming to Harvard in 1924.

The American thinkers of whom I have spoken recognized Whitehead as a fellow spirit with a quite distinct contribution to make. And Whitehead found in the Americans, especially in William James, a creative originality to admire. He even proposed that James had originated a new epoch in philosophy, the first after Descartes to do so. He incorporated into his philosophy most of the insights of James. Yet his own project, to develop a comprehensive cosmology, was quite distinct.

Although Whitehead never taught at Chicago, students of Wieman, Meland, and Hartshorne were drawn to his work. It was far more complex and systematically rigorous than that of the American thinkers. It was closely related to mathematical physics, and it offered an integration of the findings of the sciences with the evidence of religious experience that had come to seem almost impossible.

Despite their disputes with traditional metaphysics, Hartshorne and Whitehead spoke of God realistically and seriously in a way quite understandable to Christians. One could even argue that their view of God was closer to that of the Bible than was classical theism. Hence, under the influence of Hartshorne and Whitehead there developed a group of thinkers who took on the theological task in a more traditional way than had previously been common among the radical empiricists. Daniel Day Williams was the most successful in this task. His book, The Spirit and the Forms of Love (1968), remains the most impressive systematic theology written from this perspective.

Whitehead's magnum opus was entitled Process and Reality (1929). It was the prominence of "process" in this title that led to the coining of the term "process theology" to identify the work being done by this group. Sometimes the term is limited to the work of those who most closely follow Whitehead and Hartshorne. But often it is used much more broadly to include all those who pursue theological questions under the influence of radical empiricism. Used in this broader sense, it is very varied indeed.

2. The Doctrine of God

Through the centuries there has been tension between the Biblical-religious way of thinking of God and the philosophical one. It has been widely supposed that the God of the philosophers must be conceived as the "absolute" or the "unconditioned." Pascal was one of those who insisted that this is not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. For one thing, theirs is a God who interacts with creatures.

Since Pascal, some theologians have distinguished the God of revelation from the God of philosophical reason and have affirmed of the former more of the Biblical attributes. It is surprising, however, how often they still feel compelled to repeat much of what has been said originally for philosophical reasons. Developing a doctrine of God from the Bible alone leaves too many questions unanswered.

Whitehead and Hartshorne have developed a third approach. They believe that the philosophical Absolute is based on an inadequate philosophy. It arises from the substantialist thinking that Christian theologians derived from the Greeks. Attributing primacy instead to events, occurrences, happenings, or processes, they arrive at different conclusions, conclusions that turn out to be more congenial to the Bible.

Neither Whitehead nor Hartshorne makes the metaphysical shift from substances to events for the sake of a more Biblical theism. David Hume had already showed the problems with substance thought in the eighteenth century. But the tendency has been to regard the abandonment of the category of substance as requiring the abandonment of any full-blown metaphysics. Whitehead, instead, undertook a rigorous analysis of events to determine their metaphysical character.

Whitehead did not move in this direction only for philosophical reasons. He participated in the revolutionary developments in physics in the early twentieth century. Like most physicists of that time, he sought an intelligible account of the new phenomena. But unlike most of them, he did not give up the effort when it turned out that the phenomena could not be interpreted in existing categories of thought. He believed that these categories reflected substantialist habits of mind and that the task was to develop new categories genuinely oriented to events and processes. He concluded that the cosmos is composed of momentary "actual occasions" each of which incorporates within itself aspects of all past events. Among these occasions moments of human experience are the ones we know at first hand. We can affirm the reality of the others only as we generalize features of our own experience. They are all actual occasions of experience.

It is important to understand that "experience" does not mean what many empiricists have meant, that is, conscious sense experience giving rise to thought. Whitehead is a radical empiricist who understands human experience as a unity of largely unconscious feelings of the body and its environment. Out of this unconscious physical experience, sensation and thought arise. Emotions, purposes, values, memories, and anticipations are more fundamental than sense experience and thought. Sense experience and thought and consciousness generally are precisely what cannot be generalized beyond the higher animals. What can be generalized most plausibly are unconscious bodily feelings charged with emotion and purpose.

The theories developed from the generalization of such feelings are hypotheses. They are to be evaluated according to their success in interpreting the phenomena and in guiding further investigation. These theories yield a quite different and more realistic interpretation of causality than can be found in either the Humean or the Kantian traditions. They also provide ways of understanding the relation of "mind" and "body" that are more satisfying than other alternatives. And they provide a way of thinking of the phenomena treated by quantum physics that offers the possibility of intelligibility even there.

Each occasion of experience is an instance of the many becoming one and being increased by one. Whitehead cannot understand this process apart from something like unconscious purpose, an aim to be and to be as much as is possible under the circumstances. He calls this the "subjective aim" of each occasion. In part the subjective aim of human occasions is conscious. It is an aim to constitute oneself in the moment so as to attain some immediate satisfaction but also so as to affect the future. In most occasions the future that is in view is very immediate, but in human beings it can also include the more distant one.

Whitehead can explain this aiming to be, and to be in a particular way, only by reference to the effectiveness in the world of possibilities not yet realized there. These must be ordered as "lures for feeling." These are responsible for the element of purpose that pervades the world and for such novel order and ordered novelty as emerge within it. They are also responsible among human beings for the pervasive sense of positive possibilities partly attained and partly missed that Whitehead sees as characterizing moral and religious experience.

Whitehead sees the ground or source of purpose, value, order, and novelty -- and in human beings of moral and religious feeling -- as divine. He calls it God. God's efficacy in the world, requires that God be actual, like the actual occasions. But because God relates to all actual occasions through time, God cannot be momentary as they are. Instead, God is the one actual entity who is everlasting.

To be an actual entity, God cannot only act on the world. God must also be acted on. That is, while the occasions of the world feel God, God also feels them. Whitehead's technical term is "prehension." A prehension is the way one actual entity incorporates another, or some aspect of the other, into itself. Every occasion in the world incorporates into its own life some aspect of the divine, that aspect, namely, that gives it a subjective aim. Meanwhile God incorporates all that happens in the world into God's own life.

If God is like this, then everything creatures do or say or think or feel makes a difference to God. All that they are is, for good or ill, a gift to God. This is true not only of human beings, but of sparrows as well. That means that what human beings do to other human beings -- and to sparrows -- they do also to God.

All this is quite different from the relation posited between creatures and God conceived as the Absolute. There are many changes rung on that idea, but the term itself inhibits thought of a fully reciprocal and interactive relation. Often the idea of God as the Absolute leaves one mystified as to how human acts can make any difference to God at all or as to what divine love can be. Whitehead provides a detailed and realistic account of how God acts toward creatures and how they live for God.

Whitehead's account also shows that all creatures are important to God, not only human ones. Further, God's experience is not enriched simply by the addition of many elements, but also by the contrasts among them. The diversity of human cultures and personalities and the diversity of living species are all important for God. The modern simplification of the world through standardizing culture and personality and through eliminating thousands of species of living things is an impoverishment of God.

This way of thinking of God's relation to the world is often called panentheism. That means that everything past and present (but not future) is in God. God's experience is much more than the addition of all the creaturely elements, but it includes all of them. Also God is in all creatures, although only very fragmentarily so.

Clearly this is a "natural theology." That is, Whitehead gives philosophical reasons for his doctrine of God. This is offensive to many Christians. Hence it may be worthwhile to point out that Whitehead's is, in an important sense, a "Christian natural theology." That is, Whitehead does not believe that the construction of a cosmology or natural theology is a purely "rational" activity, if that would mean that it is not profoundly influenced and shaped by all sorts of historical and personal forces. Ideas and insights emerge in history in particular places for particular reasons. Their value and truth, however, are not limited to those circumstances, and their availability now is due to the originality, derived from God, that those circumstances made possible.

Whitehead sees his own central metaphysical principle as the inclusion of one actual entity in another. He asserts that this insight originated with the Alexandrian Fathers as they wrestled with the relations among the members of the Trinity and with how God was present in Jesus. He sees his own philosophy as based on a universalization of this insight.

Further, Whitehead appeals specifically to Jesus. He believes that his view of God fits with that of Jesus. He certainly does not regard this as a coincidence. What Jesus embodied in life Whitehead seeks to express in his cosmological conceptuality. If the appeal to revelation is designed to protect certain ideas from criticism, then Whitehead rejects it out of hand. But if it is the acknowledgment of the sources of our understanding, then Whitehead is a revelational thinker.

3. The Understanding of the Human Being

It is characteristic of process thought that it has not been possible to discuss God without talking about the world and its human inhabitants. God's reality includes God's relation to the world, and the world's reality includes its relation to God. Everything said about human beings must cohere with this view of their participation in the world and, with all the world, in God.

What does it mean to understand a human being in process terms, really abandoning the remnants of substantialist thinking? What is referred to, for example, by the pronoun "I" when I say that I understand or that I am annoyed? The apparent meaning is that there is something to which the pronoun refers that is characterized at one moment by understanding and at another by annoyance. This something seems to be self-identical in the two cases. One may think of it as a subject to which things happen, which has changing experiences and characteristics, and which acts, but which remains itself unchanged. But if so, one is continuing to think in terms of substances that underlie the changing world.

There is no question but that language encourages substantialist thinking. The same pronoun refers to the one who acts and is acted on over a period of time. As a pronoun it seems to stand for an entity. But an entity that, unchanged, does and suffers many things is a substance, just what process thought denies. What else can "I" mean?

Process thought points to the flow of experience through time. This can be identified as the psyche or soul, or even as the person. This flow can be analyzed into a series of events, perhaps four to ten per second. These are the human occasions of experience. Sometimes the pronoun "I" can be understood as referring to one of these or to a sequence of them. If the former, it can be said that "I" does not change. It simply comes into being and ceases moment by moment. If the latter, then "I" changes in the succession of experience. In the extreme case, when "I" refers to the entire flow of experience from birth to the present, it has changed very much indeed.

The main point here is that "I" does not refer to a reality that underlies experience but to the flow of experience as such or to the individual occasions that make it up. But there are times when something else is meant. Sometimes "I" does not mean the actual occasion in its full concreteness but some element in it, that which organizes it, or its center. That can also be understood in process terms. And there are other times when "I" does not mean the psyche alone but rather the entire psychosomatic organism. That, too, is quite intelligible in process terms, but it needs to be explained.

From the process perspective, the psychosomatic organism is a very complex entity. To simplify greatly, we can consider the soma primarily as a society of cells. Each of these cells, like the psyche, is a sequence of actual occasions of experience, each with its own reality and measure of autonomy. Each occasion of cellular experience inherits from antecedent occasions of the experience of that cell, but it also inherits from neighboring cells and through them from more distant ones. It is an instance of the many becoming one. What it becomes is a function of its own past, but also of its neighbors, of its place in the whole organism, and finally in the whole world.

One of the actual occasions, or series of actual occasions, that influences it is the psyche. Of course, the influence of the psyche is distinctive because psychic occasions are much more complex than cellular ones. Nevertheless, the way the influence occurs is similar to the way all the other cells influence it. In Whitehead's technical terms, the cell physically feels both the other cells and the psyche. In other words, aspects of all these other entities are constitutive parts of what the cellular occasion becomes. The soma, therefore, cannot be separated from the psyche, even though as a society of cells it is distinct from the psyche.

Much the same can be said of the psyche. It is distinct from the soma, but it consists in large part in the way the soma is internal to it. Each psychic occasion can be viewed as a particular unification of the soma, richer by far than the unification that takes place in the individual cellular occasions. But it is more than that, since it includes also its own past and the influence of God.

This view of the psychosomatic organism can be contrasted with substantialist ones. One of these is dualism. For the dualist, the psyche, or more often the mind, is one kind of entity, and the body is another. Their conjunction remains so puzzling that many who operate in dualistic terms refuse to acknowledge their real assumptions. Still, dualism organizes the university, with some academic disciplines devoted to the study of the physical world and others to the mental one.

In Anglo-Saxon philosophy a popular alternative to dualism is called psychophysical identism. Language about the body and language about the psyche are asserted to be complementary ways of talking about the same reality. When examined, it usually turns our that this reality is in fact viewed as physical; so psycho-physical identism hardly escapes reductionism.

Neither dualism nor identism works well for Christian theology. The unity of the psychosomatic organism is prominent in Biblical language and thought, but it does not amount to a sheer identity. Human beings are more than their bodies, even if they are inseparable from them. The condition of the body informs the soul, and the condition of the soul informs the body. Both belong to the same order of reality. Similarly, the condition of each part of the body informs all the others. There is thus a general fit between the anthropology derivative from Whitehead's cosmology and that of the Bible.

The fit goes further than this. One characteristic of substances is that they are mutually external to one another. Two substances cannot occupy the same space at the same time. One cannot be constitutive of the being of another. They cannot be internally related.

When individual people are thought of as substances, they are conceived as externally related to one another. These external relations can be important in that one may give generously to another or may restrict another's ability to move. But each is contained within her or his boundaries. The good of each is distinct from the good of others. The good of one may contribute to the good of others or detract from it, but only indirectly. The most readily drawn conclusion is that relations among individuals are basically competition for scarce resources.

In reaction against the consequences of capitalist practice, Marx rejected this individualism. But he did so by viewing larger units of human beings as substances within which individuals are subsumed. The consequences for individuals of the working out of his ideas were highly oppressive.

If the substantialist view is abandoned, a quite different picture emerges. Each occasion of human experience is constituted not only by its incorporation of the cellular occasions of its body but also by its incorporation of aspects of other people. That is, people are internally related one to another. Hence, the character of one's being, moment by moment, is affected by the health and happiness of one's neighbors.

Elements of competition are inevitable. But competition is not the basic relationship. On the contrary, people are designed for community, and their individual wellbeing is bound up with the wellbeing of their community. They are also individuals. Just as a person's psychic life is distinct from the totality of somatic events, so also it is distinct from the community of which it is a part. Although the community is constitutive of personal being, it is equally true that personal being is constitutive of community. People are neither isolated individuals nor mere parts of a greater whole. They are persons-in-community.

The community of which they are a part is not only the human one. The human community is part of a larger society of living things, of an ecosphere, and even of the total biosphere. The wellbeing of the human community and of the persons who make it up is inseparable from the wellbeing of the whole.

This is far closer to dominant Biblical ways of thinking than the alternatives. In ancient Israel the sense of the people as a whole was often primary, but it was never divorced from individual leaders. The sense of the individual grew and came to fruition in Jeremiah and Ezekiel, but not at the expense of community. Paul speaks explicitly of how, in the church, we are members one of another. It is this vision that process thought undergirds with a systematic conceptuality. Furthermore, at least in much of the Jewish scriptures, the relation to the land was also experienced as constitutive of the people's lives.

A third area in which process thought offers a conceptuality that comes close to Biblical thought is in the relation of grace and freedom. Again, substantialist habits of mind have made satisfactory formulations difficult. Clearly, in faithfulness to scripture Christians must affirm both. The primacy of grace should be affirmed in such a way as not to reduce the responsibility of human beings. Yet in ordinary substantialist ways of thinking, the more fully an act is caused by one agent, the less can be the contribution of another. If God is the cause of our faith or our love, then we are not responsible for whether we believe or love.

In order to avoid giving space to human boasting, some of the greatest theologians attributed all goodness to God in such a way that human response, and therefore responsibility, almost disappears. The church has not been able to live with the results of such extreme formulations; so it has kept reintroducing human responsibility, but often at the cost of allowing for the self-righteousness the theologians were trying to exclude. Others have tried to solve the problem by distinguishing between primary causation -- God's -- and secondary causation -- human. Still others have called on the church to be content with a paradox -- with Christians giving all credit for good to God and taking all responsibility for sin on themselves.

With the abandonment of substantialist thinking, another option emerges. In Whitehead's view, creatures have, indeed, nothing that they have not received. Much of the gift is from the world, but what is good in this gift comes ultimately, if indirectly, from God. Life is grace, through and through. Further, in each moment God gives of God's self to each creature. In human beings this gift functions as call and as empowerment to be and to do what God's gift makes possible. But possibility is not yet actuality. Just how the creatures actualize themselves in relation to the lure of God is their decision.

Too often reflection about decision employs a dualistic model of either/or, of yes and no. There are such decisions, but even for highly conscious human beings they are limiting cases. The real decisions, made moment by moment, are much better understood in terms of approximating or missing the mark. The mark is God's call in its ideality, the finest possibility God empowers us to achieve. What people actually do reflects their sensitivity and responsiveness to God and also their own competing projects.

There is a double meaning of freedom in this picture. There is formal freedom, the freedom that is embodied in decision, whatever that decision may be. Without this freedom, no other form of freedom is possible. This freedom exists in the occasion of human experience because God offers ways of constituting the occasion other than simply repeating the past, without compelling the realization of any of them. God calls for the best, but how the occasion responds is its decision. It is that decision that determines just what that occasion will be. This is self-determination in its purest form, and it occurs only by virtue of the gift of God.

But freedom has another, more theological meaning. That is the occasion's freedom to respond positively to God's call, the ability to put aside its concern for self-justification. Whereas formal freedom is expressed equally when one comes close to hitting the mark and when one misses by a wide margin, this freedom varies greatly. When formal freedom is exercised to gratify one's desire for revenge, inherited from earlier occasions, rather than to respond to the call to forgive, then one's freedom in the deeper sense is slight. Of course, it is especially evident of this deeper freedom that it is a gift of God.

There is a close connection between these two types of freedom. When the deeper, religious, freedom is little exercised, the formal freedom declines. That is, when there is little response to the call of God, when the occasions constitute themselves to carry forward projects determined in their past and impervious to the new directions in which God tries to steer them, then the new possibilities to which God calls subsequently can be less and less different from their own stubborn projects. The range of choice declines. When, on the other hand, occasions of human experience are sensitively responsive to the new possibilities God introduces, they are able to receive still greater possibilities in the future. The range of formal freedom expands.

For this theory it is not the case that as more is attributed to grace less must be attributed to freedom. On the contrary, the more effective grace is in human lives, the more freedom grows, and the more freedom grows, the more effective is grace. Freedom is the result of grace. Christians cannot boast in their right use of freedom, for that right use, as well as the freedom itself are directly given by God. But that does not reduce human responsibility to decide for God.

Grace is at work not only in human beings but also in all other creatures. It is the way that God works in the world. There is not another, controlling and all-determining work of God. That means that all events whatever are influenced by God but that none are the direct expression of God's purpose or desire.

This way of thinking changes the nature of the problem of evil. As usually formulated that presupposes that God's power is the sort that determines outcomes. Hence, when there are terrible evils such as the Holocaust, one supposes that this must somehow embody God's purpose. It is impossible to reconcile this with the belief that God is love. Process theology sees God's work in the Holocaust in every expression of resistance and in every impulse to redirect the course of events. It sees it also in the steadfast faith and humanity of many of those who were slaughtered. It does not see it in the decision to effect the Final Solution or the brutal cruelty of many of those who carried it out.

Yet, even for process thought, God bears a certain responsibility for evil. It is because of God's grace that human beings are free. Much of the evil of the Holocaust expresses the misuse of human freedom. There could be no misuse if there were no freedom to misuse. God has taken a great risk in bringing into being creatures with the amount of freedom human beings have. Sometimes one may wonder about the wisdom of that risk. A better response is to resolve that we will use God's gift in a more worthy way.

The emphasis on process also has consequences for the understanding of righteousness. This has often been bound up with rules and principles, despite Paul's profound critique of the law. Process theology sides with Paul. From the process perspective, God does not establish a set of objective laws and then leave it to individuals to obey or disobey. The relation between God and humanity is far more intimate. God's call comes moment by moment, and the human response is constantly new.

Generalizations about the nature and direction of God's call are possible. There are virtues and principles that generally correspond to it. No community can survive without socializing its children to accept certain moral values. Yet this process is a dangerous one. It is hard to teach morality without leading the pupil to believe that conformity to rules and principles is the final need. And the habit of self-discipline involved in conforming action to rules can be in tension with the sensitivity and spontaneity that make possible the fullest response to God's call.

As process thinkers have generalized about what God seeks to accomplish in the world, they have given a prominent place to aesthetic categories. In an important sense, moral categories subserve the aesthetic ones. This is shocking to many Christians.

Process thought locates reality, and therefore also value, in experience. All other values must be instrumental to this. Morality serves value in two ways. First, concern for others and decision expressing that concern add richness to the experience of which they are a part. Second, they also, if properly expressed, help the others. Hence morality is very important. Indeed, the basis of the moral dimension is in the nature of all things, since every occasion aims not only at some immediate satisfaction, but also at other satisfactions in the relevant future. The definition of that relevance is a moral issue, and for human beings its broadening is moral growth.

Still, if morality is bound up with contributing to others, the crucial question is: What is to be contributed? One contribution might be making them more moral, and that is fine. But finally, true morality cannot aim simply at the spread of morality. It must aim at the wellbeing of those it tries to help in some broader sense. For process thought that must be the perfection of their experience inclusively. Hence, morality is not an end in itself.

The language that best describes desirable characteristics of experience is derived more from aesthetics. That does not mean that it is about objective works of art. But it is about the art of life and the beauty of experience. What makes one experience superior to another is more like what makes one painting superior to another than what makes one action more moral than another.

In general, intense experience is preferable to dull experience. The eros of the universe expressed in evolution has been toward more intense experiences. It is these more intense experiences that cross the threshold of consciousness. Consciousness opens up whole ranges of new possibility for experience. Human beings in general prize consciousness and enjoy its extension to parts of experience heretofore not conscious. To heighten one's own consciousness, to become conscientized, to attain greater lucidity, all these are human aims continuous with the eros of the universe.

This consciousness cannot be sustained without variety. Mere repetition dulls it into sleep. On the other hand, sheer variety overwhelms consciousness. Consciousness can be sustained and intensified only as the variety is ordered. Whitehead's term "contrast" is borrowed from art. To whatever extent sheer diversity can be transformed into contrasts, and these into contrasts of contrasts, the experience is interesting, rich, and intense. This formation of contrasts is what Whitehead called harmony.

But any particular harmony becomes dull if it is not challenged by discord. The discord calls for the formation of new contrasts, which in their turn, if merely repeated lose intensity. There must be change, but sheer change can be destructive. Yet even destruction can heighten zest and pave the way for fresh construction that will generate greater intensity of feeling.

The theory of what God aims for in experience is never completed. Whitehead spoke sometimes of intensity, sometimes of importance, sometimes of strength of beauty. Process thinkers can talk about richness, harmony, depth of satisfaction, or even happiness. But no one term captures all that is desirable in experience. Even at this level of abstraction, there is no one yardstick to determine the excellence of an experience. God's aim is not predictable or controllable by us. We can know it only as it happens, new in each moment.

Most of Whitehead's language about what is to be aimed at in experience relates him to the philosophical tradition rather than the Biblical one. But there is one extended passage, coming at a culminating point in his reflection, that is clearly Christian. It is his discussion of "peace" in Adventures of Ideas. Here he offers a model for process theologians, a model that could and should be followed in reflection about the theological virtues: faith, hope, and love.

"The experience of Peace is largely beyond the control of purpose. It comes as a gift. . . . It results in a wider sweep of conscious interest. it enlarges the field of attention. Thus Peace is self-control at its widest,--at the width where the `self' has been lost, and interest has been transferred to coordinations wider than personality." (p. 368.)

4. Process Theology and Practical Theology

Practical theology has two meanings in the United States today. The older meaning is virtually synonymous with pastoral theology. The newer meaning refers to the whole range of theology as it is grounded in practice. This concluding section will deal with them in that sequence..

With respect to the minister's central role as preacher, the relation to process theology has been modest. Of course, there have been thousands of preachers who have been influenced by process theology to some extent and whose sermons reflect that influence. But most of the literature about preaching produced in the United States has been highly "practical," dealing with the organization, effective delivery, and style of sermons. It rarely refers to process thought.

For a closer connection between preaching and theology, Americans have turned to Europe. The Neo-orthodox movement had its most profound effect on the content and, to a lesser extent, on the style of preaching. Many ministers who used a more process-oriented style in their pastoral care and even in their teaching, preached a Neo-orthodox message.

Nevertheless, there are several books on preaching written from a process point of view. Norman Pittenger has written two: Proclaiming Christ Today (1962) and Preaching the Gospel (1984). Recently two other books have been published. One, written jointly by six process theologians, led by David Lull and William Beardslee, is entitled Biblical Preaching on the Death of Jesus (1989). It offers a way of understanding the purpose and goal of preaching from a process point of view as the making of proposals designed to promote serious reflection in the hearer. It then applies this approach to the way preachers can deal with Marcan and Pauline texts on the cross. The other, A Credible and Timely Word: Process Theology and Preaching (1991), written by Clark Williamson and Ronald J. Allen, deals more with the content of the message.

There has been a somewhat greater contribution of process theologians to the literature on ministry generally and especially on pastoral care. Daniel Day Williams participated with James Gustavson and H. Richard Niebuhr in an extensive study of Christian ministry and its implications for theological education. This resulted in an important book, The Advancement of Theological Education (1955). Subsequently, he published an influential volume, The Minister and the Care of Souls (1961) that remains a classic inthe field. Norman Pittenger has written a number of books on the church with clear implications for ministry. Among these are The Christian Church as Social Process (1971), The Ministry of All Christians: A Theology of Lay Ministry (1983), and The Pilgrim Church and the Easter People (1987).

John B. Cobb, Jr. wrote a small book on Theology and Pastoral Care (1977). Subsequently he published a book with Joseph C. Hough, Jr. on theological education, entitled Christian Identity and Theological Education (1985). Bernard Lee has written the most thorough ecclesiology from a process perspective, The Becoming of the Church (1974). Subsequently, he co-edited with Harry James Cargas, Religious Experience and Process Theology: the Pastoral Implications of a Major Modern Movement (1976).

Thus far I have spoken of books written about ministry by process theologians. Fortunately, there are also books written from a process perspective by persons more fully immersed in the tasks of ministry and their study.

The pragmatic temper of thought in the United States has meant that pastoral theology and the arts of ministry subsumed in it have been given a great deal of attention. In the nineteenth century the Sunday School movement sometimes almost outweighed the church itself in social importance. Reflection on the Sunday School made of religious education a discipline with considerable social influence. The emphasis on experience led to concentrating pastoral care on pastoral counseling, and this burgeoned into a major aspect of church life.

The history of these movements is intertwined with that of process thought in general and to a lesser, but increasing, extent with process theology more narrowly considered. There are now small professional associations promoting the relation of psychotherapy and education to process thought. Although neither is focused on religion or the church, pastoral counselors and religious educators are prominent in both.

The pastoral counseling movement has been a major center of vitality in the North American church, both in its institutional life and in its theoretical reflections. It has embodied much of the ideal of praxis, that is, of theory growing out of practice and being tested in practice. And it has challenged theology generally to relate itself more closely to the actual experiences of Christians.

Pastoral counseling has drawn on many sources, including the psychotherapeutic theories developed in Europe. But in its efforts to identify its work as pastoral in the context of the church, it has turned more to aspects of the American tradition. For the most part this has been general and not explicit, but the contacts are clear both in Seward Hiltner and Howard Clinebell, two of its major leaders in recent decades.

Gordon Jackson has gone far beyond this general connection. In Pastoral Care and Process Theology (1981), he has worked out the contributions process theology can make to pastoral counseling in a rigorous and detailed fashion. Archie Smith's The Relational Self: Ethics and Therapy from a Black Church Perspective (1982) is explicitly and intentionally informed by process thought. Robert Brizee and David Roy are among the newer voices in the field who are working systematically to integrate pastoral counseling with process theology.

I summarized works by process theologians on pastoral ministry and pastoral care and then turned to the work of pastoral counselors on their field. The organization of the arts of ministry is such that while pastoral counseling is an important profession, pastoral care in general is less professionalized. Nevertheless, there is a literature written from the side of pastoral theologians on this subject also.

A notable recent contributor to this literature from the process perspective is Robert Kinast. He has written When a Person Dies: Pastoral Theology in Death Experience (1984), and Caring for Society: A Theological Interpretation of Lay Ministry (1985). James Poling has written with Donald Miller, Foundations for a Practical Theology of Ministry (1985).

The religious education movement has had a long history of interaction with the American tradition. It was especially influenced by John Dewey. Although it tried to adjust to the concerns of Neo-Orthodoxy, its necessary preoccupation with developmental stages, learning theory, and religious growth have made it more comfortable with process-type thinking. Among its leaders some, such as Randolph Crump Miller, have systematically related their thought to the Chicago school. Among his books the most important in this regard is The Theory of Christian Education Practice (1980). Miller is currently editing a book for Religious Education Press, Empirical Theology, that draws together the present state of radical empirical thinking with the concerns of religious education in view. Gloria Durka and Joanmarie Smith wrote Modeling God: Religious Education for Tomorrow (1976), dealing chiefly with the content of religious education.

Mary Elizabeth Moore has published a systematic account of the task of religious education in Education for Continuity and Change (1983). She has just completed a book, Teaching from the Heart (1991), that pioneers a quite new relation between religious education and process theology. She identifies five methods used by religious educators: case study, gestalt, phenomenology, narrative, and conscientizing. She shows how each is generally congenial to process theology, how process theology can modify each constructively, and how each challenges process theology to modify and develop itself.

This book not only describes, uses, and criticizes process theology. It also embodies the implication of the basic model of process thought in its structure. This is the model of the many becoming one. In this model, any existent form of process theology should function as one of the many that is becoming one. It can do so only as it is brought into realistic relations with other styles of thought that complement and challenge it. Moore has shown that just this relation can exist between process theology and the five methods she summarizes. The task of integrating all this "many" into a new "one" is not complete, and when that is done, there will be new challenges. This is the process for which process theology calls. Moore has advanced it beyond anyone else.

Process philosophy does not claim to incorporate all that is needed within itself. It operates at a more general level. It strives for generalizations that are, in Whitehead's words, consistent, coherent, applicable, and adequate. But it emphasizes that the particulars, where all the value lies, cannot be deduced from the generalizations. They must be examined as particulars. The hope is that the generalizations constituting process philosophy can illumine the particulars and show how they are interconnected with one another.

Most of the writings mentioned above follow this general approach. The writers look at a field of particulars through spectacles provided by process thought. They believe that these enable them to appreciate much that has been seen through other spectacles, but also to make distinctive contributions. Sometimes they propose quite new theories and practice; sometimes they are able to transform apparent conflict into contrasts, that is, into different but not mutually exclusive ideas and practices.

Moore's book illustrates this use of process philosophy. She examines each of the methods from a process perspective and proposes modifications. She also makes clear that despite their marked differences, and the apparent contradictions in some of the theories related to them, the five methods can function as complementary approaches in religious education. In other words, she converts sheer diversity into contrast.

But despite her brilliant use of process thought, Moore is not satisfied with it. She wants it to be more praxis oriented. Process thought as such has remained at the level of generality, inviting its use for the illumination of particulars. What is learned about these particulars is not taken up into process thought itself. This reverse movement occurs, from the traditional process perspective, only when the study of the particulars displays a limitation in the generalities as generalities. That constitutes a crisis in the system, requiring important revision. Moore believes this approach insulates the philosophy, and the theology as well, too much from the particularities and from the practice these require.

This is an acute and pertinent criticism of process philosophy by an excellent participant in the movement. It is explicitly directed at process theologians, who by virtue of profession have already incorporated some particularities into their work. To be a Christian theologian is to deal with the particularity of Jesus Christ and of the church and the problems that arise in its life. Moore's objection is that, even so, process theologians tend to offer their interpretations of problems as presented and formulated by others rather than entering into the full particularity of either church or social life and allowing their whole mode of being to be challenged in the process. It may well be that the most important problems we need to address as Christians are not those best illumined by the general features of the particulars. The particularity of suffering demands address more than the understanding of what is common to all suffering. Hence, Moore is calling process theology to become, in the second sense, a practical theology.

This understanding of practical theology arose on the American scene out of liberation theologies. The first form of liberation theology was Black theology. As Moore makes clear, its challenge to process theology has not yet evoked an adequate response.

Black theology asserted that the Bible is written from the standpoint of the oppressed and that it has been consistently misread by white oppressors. White theology has been an ideology that either justified oppression or justified ignoring the oppression inflicted on others. Blacks pointed out that the civilization of the United States was founded on slavery and continued on the basis of the exploitation of Blacks. This oppression is antithetical to the Bible. Yet white theologians had remained indifferent and silent, focusing on the personal, social, and conceptual problems of whites, and ignoring the more radical injustice continually inflicted on Blacks.

This critique was directed at white theologians generally, but it applied as clearly to process theologians as to any others. Racism was a problem we left to Christian ethicists; it had not been for us a theological issue. We had not thought about our social location in any such terms. We had been preoccupied with intellectual problems set for us by the history of Western thought, not the real social and human problems set by human suffering. Did that invalidate our claim to be Christian theologians?

Painful as this reflection has been, it has also been salutary. The truth of the accusations cannot be denied. We could repent and seek to be more aware of our social location and its tendency to distort our perceptions and misdirect our energies. We could give moral and intellectual support to Black theology and the Black cause generally. But we could not cease to believe that what we had seen from our perspective was also there to be seen, even if concentrating on that had dulled our awareness of the wrongness of our basic social situation. We could recognize that emphasizing what is common in all situations can blind us to the most important issues, issues that only immersion in concrete situations of oppression can make real to us. But we white process theologians could not become Black theologians even if we were willing to abandon process theology in order to do so. The furthest we could go was to seek complementarity, working in white churches to increase the chance for Black liberation to succeed. For that purpose there was no advantage in rejecting in process theology.

Beyond generally opposing racism and calling for justice, whites differ as to what such complementary work should be. Some, such as the process theologian, Delwin Brown, have taken up themes of liberation theology. His To Set at Liberty (1981) explores the theme of freedom in dialogue with Latin American theologies. Others have adopted an analogous style, identifying other oppressions and developing parallel liberation theologies. This has been the path taken by the feminist theologians, and it has been the most productive.

As a male process theologian I have worked on ecological issues, especially in a book with Charles Birch, The Liberation of Life (1981), believing that some of the features of our society that oppress Blacks are also challenged in the name of saving the biosphere. Most process theologians share in this ecological concern and express it in their writings. Recently, Jay McDaniel has extended this discussion to issues of animal welfare in Of God and Pelicans (1989), Earth, Sky, Gods and Mortals (1990), and Liberating Life (1990), edited with Charles Birch and William Eakin.

The oppression of Blacks, the destruction of the biosphere, the perpetuation of patriarchy, the exploitation of the Third World, and cruelty to animals are all profoundly enforced by the global economic system. Immersion in particular situations does not encourage wrestling with global patterns or with the academic theories that support them. Hence, part of the task of white process theologians is to complement the work of Black (and other liberation) theologies by engaging in theory-critique and proposing alternative directions for global economic systems. To this end I teamed up with an economist, Herman Daly, to write For the Common Good (1989).

To understand process theology in this way is more modest than our self-understanding before the encounter with Black theology. Black theology has taught us that there is an approach to understanding that is radically different from what ours has been but yet profoundly revealing. There are needs that we cannot meet by any of the approaches we have tried. At best we can see our task and that of others as complementary.

This separateness of process theology and Black theology has softened with the passage of time. The debates among Black theologians raised some questions that have been important in white theology. For example, the problem of evil takes on peculiar poignancy when the evil in view is the century-long oppression of Blacks. But the alternatives discussed in the white literature, including the position of process theology, are relevant to the discussion.

A few Black theologians have found aspects of process theology helpful in their work. The most important product of this emergence of a Black process theology is Hope in Process, by Henry Young. Young seeks a model for American society that goes beyond the alternatives of integration of Blacks into white society and Black separateness. He finds useful the process model of the many becoming one. Here the one is a new reality that emerges out of the discrete contributions of the many, not the assimilation of the many to an already established one.

The second wave of liberation theology that struck us was feminist. The shock was not as great, because Black theology had paved the way for oppressed people to call for a theology that was truly liberating for them. Yet in many ways the feminist call for change was even more radical, since relations between men and women are fundamental to all human existence.

Process theologians were caught by surprise. Just as we had not attended to the importance of the difference between the experience of oppressed and oppressor races; so we had not thought of the difference between male and female experience in relation to philosophy or theology. Whole new horizons for reflection were opened up.

Ironically, many of the formal points made by women against the male-dominated tradition had already been made by process theologians against classical theology. We had objected to the insistence that God is wholly unaffected by what happens in the world, wholly self-sufficient and self-contained. But it had not occurred to us that these attributes were idealized masculine ones! We had opposed on ontological grounds the dualisms of mind and body, of humanity and nature, even of God and world. We had insisted on the interconnectedness and interdependence of all things and on the organic unity of the whole. But we had not connected what we opposed with the dualism of male and female or with particularly masculine habits of thought.

On issue after issue feminist thought did not require that we abandon the conceptuality we had derived from Whitehead and Hartshorne. On the contrary, we appreciated it even more. But it came to seem to us formal and arid in comparison with the historical richness, rhetorical power, and practical implications with which feminists clothed their similar convictions. We learned the importance of understanding the social location in which ideas arose, the uses that have been made of them, and what is actually heard in words, whether consciously intended or not.

Many feminists have been suspicious of process theology for reasons similar to those of Blacks. They are convinced that the really important issues are discovered through the process of conscientization and immersion in concrete particulars. They are put off by the level of generality at which process philosophy and theology operate.

But from the beginning there was some recognition also of shared interests and concerns. Valerie Saiving, who published in 1960 an article that now seems an important anticipation of feminist theology, was a process theologian. Even Mary Daly spoke favorably of Whitehead. And the model for God-world relations adopted by Sally McFague is almost identical with one long used by Hartshorne.

A number of women found that Daniel Day Williams, then at Union Theological Seminary, offered them help as they struck out into uncharted territories. In Claremont the woman's movement that spawned a variety of creative feminist thinkers developed in close relation with process theology. As feminist theologians, such as Rosemary Ruether, take the ecological issues with increasing seriousness, more bridges are built between process theology and feminist theology.

Indeed, much of the leadership of process theology is passing into the hands of feminists who may be making of it the practical theology for which Moore calls. In addition to Moore, examples of those who have published books are Marjorie Suchocki, Penelope Washbourn, Jean Lambert, Catherine Keller, Rita Brock, and Susan Dunfee. There are also feminist Jewish process theologians: Sandra Lubarsky and Lori Krafte Jacobs. In addition, Sheila Davaney has edited a volume of essays entitled Feminism and Process Thought (1981).

Process theology, under that unattractive name, will not continue indefinitely. From its own point of view it should change and develop, and in due course what it becomes will be known by other names. But for the present, some of us continue to discover in the conceptuality of Alfred North Whitehead insights whose usefulness has not been exhausted as well as the possibility of a coherent vision of the world that we find nowhere else. As long as this is true, there is reason to continue the study of his writings and to share in the work of rendering his thought fruitful.

References

William A. Beardslee, et. al., Biblical Preaching on the Death of Jesus. Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon, 1989.

Charles Birch and John B. Cobb, Jr., The Liberation of Life. Denton, Texas: Environmental Ethics Books, 1990 [1981].

Charles Birch, William Eakin, and Jay B. McDaniel, Liberating Life. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1990.

Rita Brock, Journeys by Heart: A Christology of Erotic Power. NY: Crossroad, 1988.

Delwin Brown, To Set at Liberty. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1981.

Harry James Cargas and Bernard Lee, Religious Experience and Process Theology. NY: Paulist, 1976.

John B. Cobb, Jr., Theology and Pastoral Care. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977.

Herman E. Daly and John B. Cobb, Jr., For the Common Good. Boston: Beacon, 1989.

Sheila Davaney, ed., Feminism and Process Thought. NY: Edwin Mellen, 1981.

Susan Nelson Dunfee, Beyond Servanthood. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1989.

Gloria Durka and Joanmarie Smith, Modeling God: Religious Education for Tomorrow. NY: Paulist, 1976.

Joseph C. Hough, Jr. and John B. Cobb, Jr., Christian Identity and Theological Education. Chico, California: Scholars, 1985.

Gordon Jackson, Pastoral Care and Process Theology. Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1981.

Catherine Keller, From a Broken Web: Separation, Sexism, and Self. Boston: Beacon, 1986.

Robert L. Kinast, When a Person Dies: Pastoral Theology in Death Experience. Chicago: Thomas More, 1984.

--- , Caring for Society: A Theological Interpretation of Lay Ministry. Chicago: More, 1985.

Jean Christine Lambert, The Human Action of Forgiving. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1985.

Bernard Lee, The Becoming of the Church. NY: Paulist, 1974.

Sandra Lubarsky, Tolerance and Transformation: Jewish Approaches to Religious Pluralism. Cincinatti, Ohio: Hebrew Union College, 1990.

Jay B. McDaniel, Of God and Pelicans: A Theology of Reverence for Life. Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster, 1989.

--- , Earth, Sky, Gods and Mortals. Mystic, Connecticut: Twenty-Third Publications, 1990.

Sally McFague, Models of God. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987.

Randolph Crump Miller, The Theory of Christian Education Practice. Birmingham, Alabama: Religious Education, 1980.

Mary Elizabeth Moore, Education for Continuity and Change. Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon, 1982.

--- , Teaching from the Heart. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress, 1991.

H. Richard Niebuhr, Daniel Day Williams, and James Gustafson, The Advancement of Theological Education. NY: Harper & Brothers, 1955.

Norman Pittenger, Proclaiming Christ Today. Greenwich, Connecticut: Seabury, 1962.

--- , The Christian Church as Social Process. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1971.

--- , The Ministry of All Christians. Wilton, Connecticut: Morehouse-Barlow, 1983.

--- , Preaching the Gospel. Wilton, Connecticut: Morehouse-Barlow, 1984.

--- , The Pilgrim Church and the Easter People. Wilmington, Delaware: Michael Glazier, 1987.

James N. Poling and Donald Miller, Foundations for a Practical Theology of Ministry. Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon, 1985.

Walter Rauschenbusch, A Theology for the Social Gospel. NY: Macmillan, 1922.

Archie Smith, The Relational Self: Ethics and Therapy from a Black Church Perspective. Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon, 1982.

Marjorie Suchocki, God, Christ, Church: A Practical Guide to Process Theology. (revised ed.) NY: Crossroads, 1989 [1982].

--- , The End of Evil. Albany, NY: SUNY, 1988.

Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, (corrected ed.) ed. by David Ray Griffin and Donald Sherburne. NY: Free, 1978 [1929].

Penelope Washbourn, Becoming Woman: the Quest for Wholeness in Female Experience. NY: Harper & Row, 1979 [1977] .

Daniel Day Williams, The Minister and the Care of Souls. NY: Harper & Row, 1961.

--- , The Spirit and the Forms of Love. NY: Harper & Row, 1968.

Clark Williamson and Ronald J. Allen, A Credible and Timely Word: Process Theology and Preaching. St. Louis, Missouri: Chalice, 1991.

Henry James Young, Hope in Process: A Theology of Social Pluralism. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress, 1990.

Christology in the United States

Since 1965 the character of theology in the United States has changed drastically. For the thirty years preceding that date, the discussion of theology in general and of Christology in particular had centered around the issues between traditional American liberalism and the neo-Orthodoxy that was brought in from Central Europe. Defenders of philosophical theology and of humanistic Christologies had been put on the defensive by the new currents from the European continent.

The Death of God theology and other developments of the late sixties changed the character of the discussion. Both the liberal and the Neo-Orthodox traditions were put on defensive by Black Theology, Latin American liberation theology, and feminist theology. Many other special issues were raised. It became clear that not only the traditional doctrines of Christology, but the whole context in which the discussion was couched was problematic. In general, the questions of intelligibility and credibility that had dominated the liberal agenda and the questions of continuity with the tradition that had dominated the Neo-orthodox one gave way to issues of praxis. What effect did Christological affirmations have on behavior? Whose interests did they support?

Much of the resultant work on Christology has been critical. Many of those who have treated the topic have felt no need to develop affirmative Christologies of their own. But still construtive Christological work has been done in this context.

Nowhere does the pluralism of current American theology come to expression more vividly than in this Christology. The diversity is not limited to the content of the doctrine. It lies first in the understanding of the question that is being asked. What counts as a responsible approach to Christology? This differs in the several distinct but overlapping groups within which theological work proceeds. The next and major section of this essay will propose a fourfold typology of the ways in which the Christological task is understood.

There is one group of theologians that understands the task of Christology quite traditionally. Christ is the central focus of the church, and the church's task in each generation is to clarify who Christ is. The church lives in a changing world, so that even though Christ is unchanged, the witness to Christ must change. The language used in the ancient creeds no longer communicates; so what those creeds said in their time must be restated for our time. This is both for the sake of believers and for apologetical purposes. The gospel should not be identified with archaic formulations. Its real scandal should be heard by removing the false scandals associated with an alien and outdated worldview.

Members of this group differ in their judgments as to which features of the changing situation are most to be considered in the reformulation of the unchanging message. Some focus on conceptual problems highlighted by changing worldviews. Some emphasize the linguistic turn and the deepened understanding of metaphor, myth, and symbol that has come from it. Some are alarmed by what human beings are doing to their physical environment and concerned about the role of theology in distracting attention from this. Some are most impressed by liberation movements and the new recognition of the liberating power of the gospel. Some are struck by the new awareness of the role of gender in shaping thought and language. Some attend to the growing recognition of the intrinsic value and validity of other great religious traditions. Some are particularly sensitive to how Christology affects Christian attitudes and actions toward the Jews. Hence, even though I speak of this as one group, the Christologies that its members offer are quite diverse.

There is a second group that believes that Christology can no longer be carried on primarily as an inner-Christian activity. This whole traditional program should be criticized from broader human perspectives. The theological task is to view the long inner-Christian program of self-reflection in light of the global situation or of the new awareness of the autonomy of ethics or the obvious importance of peace among religions or commitment to the liberation of the oppressed. All the issues mentioned above reappear here; so once again the variety is great within this community. What unites it is the conviction that integrity demands attention to new understanding as it arises outside the church and acceptance of the norms that understanding involves. Christology should be reconstructed in light of these norms.

This classification of theologies separates theologians who are quite close to one another and groups some whose horizons and work are quite diverse. Some who understand the task of theology to be faithfulness to the one gospel long ago given may yet engage in quite radical reformulation as a result of their reflections on the Holocaust. What they say may be quite similar to the positions of others who believe that in light of the Holocaust Christians must acknowledge the validity of norms and truths they do not derive from their own revelation and must revise their doctrines accordingly.

Yet there is also a deep difference, and it is to this difference that I am calling attention. In the first case the theologians believe that they are simply clarifying a truth that has always been known and believed in such a way that certain distortions will not recur. In the second case theologians believe that what has been known by Christians in the past must be confronted by a quite different knowledge that has arisen through recent experience and that has at least equal authority.

Some of the clearest examples of this second group are to be found in the writings of feminist theologians. To be a feminist theologian is to affirm the authority of women's experience and the goal of overcoming patriarchy. The authority of women's experience and commitment to this goal are maintained independently of whether they can be justified by appeal to Christian tradition, including the Bible. Indeed, more energy is typically devoted to exposing the patriarchy of both than in showing that historic Christianity now supports feminism. Yet feminism becomes feminist theology only when it undertakes to show that within the Christian tradition there also lie possibilities of reformulation that can accommodate feminism. Feminist theology is a call for a revolutionary transformation of Christianity in which those elements that are supportive of feminism come to dominance. But the appeal is to the intrinsic merit of feminist insights and goals as much as to the Christian tradition.

Rita Brock has recently written a feminist Christology that fits the model I am describing. She begins by setting aside the paradigm of sin and forgiveness as the basic understanding of what is wrong and how it is made right. She replaces this with the paradigm of damage and healing. She supports this shift first by appeal to current psychological wisdom, especially to the work of Alice Miller. If that to which the New Testament bears witness can now be acknowledged as salvific, it must be in terms of healing those who are damaged more than of forgiving sinners.

Brock finds plenty of evidence in the New Testament account of Jesus that he was indeed a healer. But she does not believe that focusing on Jesus as an individual is healing today. It encourages both individualism and authoritarianism. Instead, we need to see how Jesus himself was sustained by a community, a community in which women played a central healing role, a community that healed Jesus. It is this "Christa-community" that healed then and has the power to heal today.

Another clear example of this kind of theology can be found in John Hick. He is professionally a philosopher, but his deep concern with Christian theology, and specifically Christology, is manifest in his writings. At one time he held to a Christology that he would now characterize as exclusivist. But his encounter with Muslims in Birmingham forced him to reject this mindset. Since then he has been pressing for Christians to change their Christologies, not because they are unfaithful to Jesus Christ but because they are demonstrably falsifying of what occurs in other religious communities and obviously destructive in Christian relations to these communities.

John Hick appeals to a deep commonality in the great religious traditions despite his keen awareness of their differences. In doing so he stands in the tradition of Schleiermacher who discerned behind the diverse religions a shared experience of absolute dependence on God. Much of liberal theology through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries appealed to some such common element in all the religions as a basis for mutual understanding among them as well as for norms to determine which is the best.

A third group of theologians has emerged in reaction to this tendency to appeal from the particularities of Christianity to religious experience in general. This appeal to religious experience or some religious universal assumes that despite the diverse linguistic formulations to be found in the several religious communities, all are relating to the one God or the one Ultimate Reality. The third group rejects this radically.

In doing so this group is positively influenced by developments in contemporary philosophy and the social sciences that stress the impossibility of getting beyond particular languages to a reality of which they speak. The implication is that each community lives by and in a "cultural-linguistic" system. George Lindbeck's book,The Nature of Doctrine, signaled the emergence of this theological approach and gave great impetus to it.

Although this group arose primarily in reaction to the appeal to religious experience, it is also fully cognizant that its position radically excludes the kind of feminist theology represented by Rita Brock. There can be no appeal to woman's experience or to contemporary psychological knowledge for norms by which to evaluate the Christian revelation. The revelation must be the sole judge of the validity of woman's experience and of psychological theories insofar as they are to function theologically.

This group shares much with the first. Theology must be done from within the cultural-linguistic community by appeal to its own traditions. But the ethos of this group differs from that of the first. The traditions themselves have allowed a place for common human experience. Within them various forms of "natural theology," whether under that rubric or another, have played a large role. There has been a strong tendency to believe that the God who is revealed in Jesus Christ is also God of all peoples, indeed of the whole of creation. Hence the missionary enterprise often seeks points of contact for the gospel. There is even some openness to learn from others about their experience of the same God.

This third group rejects natural theology radically. Any appeal to sources of knowledge outside of Christian revelation is opposed. Christ is the only revelation, and the task of theology in general and of Christology in particular is to witness only to him. If feminists are to participate in Christian theology, they must display the justice of their cause through their interpretation of the one revelation.

The similarities with Barth are obvious and affirmed, and his influence is strong. Nevertheless, there is also a difference. In Lindbeck's formulation, the context is radically pluralistic. Theology is for the sake of Christians. Other communities have other cultural-linguistic systems. The implication is one of live and let live. The Christian task is to deepen our immersion in our own system, to allow it to shape our individual and collective lives. Whether this involves witnessing to members of other communities is by no means clear. Also, the God of whom Christians speak is so tied to Jesus that nothing can be said of how this God relates to those who do not live from faith in the revelation in Jesus.

A fourth group accepts the cultural relativism of the third, but interprets it differently. It assumes that from the perspectives that come to expression in cultural-linguistic systems and are shaped by them, something of reality is seen. What is seen is not the same as what is seen by members of other communities. Hence there is a circularity between perspective and what is seen. But the interaction of communities can change both and lead to each seeing elements of reality not seen before. Cultural-linguistic systems are not self-enclosed. They are historical. The task is not to preserve them unchanged but to develop them in ways that increase their grasp of reality.

The difference in assumptions here is all-important. Whereas much of recent thought has denied that language refers beyond itself to anything other than language, this fourth group is not persuaded. For this reason, it cultivates dialogue. Although the cultural-linguistic system of Christians is very different from that of Buddhists, in dialogue Christians appear to gain the ability to see some things they had not noticed before, and the same seems to be true for Buddhists.

From this point of view, much of what is of concern to the second group can be affirmed. Members of this fourth group believe that contemporary psychologists have learned some things about human reality that Christians would never have learned through closer attention to their specific revelation. Also, attention to the experience of women has brought to light much about the past and present and the nature of reality in general that could have been learned only in this way. Theology should assimilate this new understanding.

To this point there is agreement with some members of the first group who are engaged in quite radical revision of past formulations in their efforts to reformulate the unchanging gospel. But there is a difference. The dialogical approach of the fourth group is open to the possibility that what it learns from the other has a normative importance for theology. The new doctrinal formulation must acknowledge the authority both of the Christian revelation and of women's experience or of Buddhist wisdom gained through Enlightenment. Here this group sides with the second.

But there is a difference from the second as well. For the fourth group what is done in accepting the normative role of a wisdom that arose outside of the community of Christian faith must itself be understood as an expression of faithfulness to Jesus Christ. One must be open to all the sources to which Rita Brock and John Hick attribute normative authority because one is a Christian believer. The central task in formulating a Christology is to show that believing in Jesus Christ calls one to learn whatever can be learned whatever the source.

This also requires, of course, that Christ remains the basis on which Christians judge the truth of the purported insights and wisdom of other communities. This brings this group back in touch with the first. Still, there is a difference. In the first group Christian revelation functions as a once-for-all given. There can be radical changes in formulation, but the theologians understand what they are doing as bringing to clearer and more adequate expression what has already been there in the revelation. For the fourth group the revelation calls for its own transcending. It must be shown to provide within itself the ability to judge when a change is in fact a going beyond and when it is a falling beneath. But the judgment is not based on similarity to what is already revealed or to conformity to any norms implicit in it.

Rosemary Reuther belongs to this fourth group, at least in some of her writings. She takes as normative for Christians the prophetic tradition. She recongizes that this tradition is as patriarchal as any of the other traditions in the Bible. But it has at its heart a principle of critique and repentance. To be faithful to that tradition today is not to criticize only what it criticized but to criticize even that tradition in light of new recognition of oppression an injustice. The repentance to which we are now called is quite different from that to which Israel was called. But becoming different in that way is precisely what faithfulness to that tradition entails.

In the academic scene in the United States, the second group, which in this typology may appear to be extreme, is in fact the mediating one. Much of the energy that goes into reflection about the Christian tradition in general, and Christology in particular, is generated by awareness of its oppressive character. Many religious thinkers seek to free themselves and others from this oppression by tearing down all Christological claims. Their norms, in their own understanding, come from quite different sources. Their sense of what is religiously healthy requires them to separate themselves wholly from the church and from the Christian tradition. They are post-Christian and anti-Christian. Those who share in the criticisms but believe that they can be internalized into Christianity are in the minority among the academic students of religion and are often ridiculed and ostracized by the dominant group.

The theological typology offered above was designed to show the precariousness of this group within the theological community. Their role is to offer revolutionary proposals within theology so as to rebuild a bridge to those who have rejected all of its traditional forms. A crucial judgment that the church must make is whether to reject their offerings because of their ambiguous character and radical demands or to seize upon them as an occasion for repentance for that in our history which now appears evil to so many sensitive critics.

Most theologians are deeply dissatisfied with the present state of the church. This is least true of theologians in the first group. They view the present situation, with all of its urgent need for reformulations, as continuous with a long past rather than as a decisive crisis. But the other three groups do feel the sense of crisis keenly.

For the second group the crisis is whether persons who are awakened to the evils inflicted on the world by Christianity can remain Christian with integrity. This will be possible only if the church repents. If it does not, then it will be left to those who do not see the need of repentance, who will blindly or even wilfully continue the oppressions of the past.

For the third group the crisis is one of Christian identity. The church has been acculturated in such a way that it no longer witnesses to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Its members no longer know what it means to be Christian. They cannot distinguish the gospel from all kinds of beliefs widespread in the secular world. Unless the church reclaims its distinctive message, its distinctive language, and its distinctive practices, it will merge into the general culture, sanctioning whatever positions and ideas are currently dominant.

For the fourth group the crisis is partly defined by the two directions indicated. There is truth in both, but as they are formulated, each seems to reject the truth in the other. To fail to repent will be to continue in sin, and that cannot be the right direction for the church! But if the norms that govern the needed metanoia are found only outside the church, then the identity of the church is indeed threatened. There is, indeed, need to renew the faithfulness that establishes our identity as Christians and not to confuse this with whatever is current and dominant in the culture. But if that is done by closing itself to the truth and wisdom that others offer us, we will be impoverished indeed!

I have already indicated that there are other ways to classify Christological work in the United States. We could discuss that work that is being done in response to the Holocaust, that which is being done in the horizon of world religions, that which is being done as an expression of the experience of oppression, as by Blacks, and so forth. This variety is the most obvious feature of American Christology. And this classification cuts across that which I have offered.

There are also other issues that cut across both of these classifications. One may be called ontological. Historically even when Christians have used the extreme language, "Jesus is God," they have not meant that God is Jesus. God has been assumed to be present throughout the creation in ways that Jesus was not.

However, in the twentieth century, many have rejected metaphysics. For some theologians this has meant that our knowledge of the one God who created heaven and earth comes to us through revelation rather than philosophy. But for others, it has meant that talk of God must be talk of some natural or historical reality since we no longer believe that any other talk has meaning. In this case "God" names some aspect of natural or historical reality, and if "God" names Jesus or what may be called the Christ-event, then there is no reference of the word "God" except Jesus or the Christ-event.

This issue is more directly about the doctrine of God than strictly Christology, but it deeply affects Christology as well. It cuts across the divisions indicated above. One may understand the Christological task in any of the four ways identified above and come down on either side of this divide. But the tendency to maintain a distinction between Jesus and God, attributing to them different ontological status, is strongest in the first and fourth, and the tendency to identify God with the revelation of God is strongest in the second and third, which in other ways seem to be most strongly opposed to one another.

Among those theologians who do have a realistic doctrine of God, the distinction of Christology from above and Christology from below is meaningful. Traditional forms of the former are likely to be found only in the first group identified in Section I of this paper, but analogous disctinctions can be made also within the fourth group. The distinction between Alexandrian and Antiochene types of theology can also be made, and although these tend to correspond to the previous distinction, they are not identical with it. And traditional Catholic-Protestant distinctions and distinctions among Protestant traditions are still visible among Christologies.

Nevertheless, despite the continuing relevance of these traditional distinctions, they appear as secondary issues in the wider horizon of Christological discussion in the United States. In this discussion the traditional approaches to reflecting on Christology are themselves rendered highly problematic. It is this problematic, rather than the differences among the traditional approaches, that constitute the distinctive American contribution to Christology at this time.

Our meeting here could be an historic event. It could be the beginning of a different kind of self-reflection by schools of theology, and of a process of thoughtful self-transformation. Such a development among schools of theology could encourage similar changes in churches and even in universities.

Of course, our gathering is more likely to be just one more of many occasions on which representatives of seminaries gather to discuss what might be desirable, knowing all the while that the realities of institutional politics preclude any significant change. We well know how difficult it is to change curriculum, how deeply we are all entrenched in our disciplines. But even if we fail to make much of a dent in our established ways, our meeting may be one more step in changing the climate in which we work, and, if so, it will be worth the time and effort that has been expended. Still, it will not be "historic."

Let me explain why, despite my realistic assessment that it will probably be otherwise, I hope so urgently for the historic outcome. My explanation will be quite personal.

In 1969 I was awakened to the realization that if humanity continued on its dominant lines of activity, the Earth was headed for catastrophe. I was shocked to the core of my being. I had been aware before then, of course, of various problems. I knew there was starvation in the world. I knew that there were continued patterns of colonial oppression. Noone could have lived through the sixties without being aware of the depths of racial injustice in our own country. And noone could live in Southern California and not know about smog.

But until that summer, this litany of evils, one that could be greatly extended, had seemed a matter of miscellaneous problems against which some headway was being made. One should select some problem, I thought, and do what one could to respond to it, supporting others who focused on other problems. That was our Christian calling. We needed to be involved in the ongoing struggle for justice, urgent, of course, but set against a background of long-term historical developments from which one could derive encouragement.

What I realized in the summer of 1969 was that history as we have known it, with all its greatness and all its horrors, would not continue unless its direction was changed. Efforts to mitigate particular injustices did not seem very significant if, as relative justice emerged here and there, the basis of livelihood for all eroded radically. Most of our best-intentioned efforts seemed more like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic than like taking part in God's work of gradual bringing of Shalom. The impending doom seemed so important that I became obsessed with it. Nothing else seemed to matter very much. I spoke and wrote and organized conferences about this in a rather shrill tone, I fear.

Nothing that has happened in the ensuing quarter century has changed my conviction that we are collectively moving toward destruction. Nor do I feel much better about participating in institutions, such as schools and churches, that continue to be part of the problem more than part of the solution. But I have realized, more and more vividly, that simply recognizing the danger does little good. Also, changing individual lifestyles, desirable as that is, does not go far toward saving the planet. If the catastrophes that are already happening, and the greater ones that are now inevitable, are to be contained and limited, there must be profound changes in institutions.

In 1973 our faculty in Claremont adopted a curriculum theme that acknowledged the global crisis and the suffering it was already causing as the context in which we taught our courses. It was a good step, and with Dean Freudenberger's leadership, it had some effect on our scholarly work, on our teaching, and on the understanding of ministry of many of our graduates. But it had very little effect on the School of Theology at Claremont as an institution, and our graduates have had very little effect on the church as an institution. I do not minimize the importance of our effort or of its ongoing legacy, but I do feel the need to reflect on why its effects have been so modest.

These effects have been modest, first, because our commitment was modest. We could vote for the theme because this committed us only to be open to its possible implications, not to rethink either our individual courses or the curriculum as a whole. Second, since little was institutionalized, what did occur depended on wthe interests and concerns of particular people. As they leave, the whole thing tends to become part of the history of the school and its curriculum, fading into the past. Changing faculties bring changing emphases, and the institution within which these faculties work allows for this. But as an institution, STC continues to embody those values and those assumptions that result in unsustainable practices rather than others that might generate a sustainable society.

Back in the seventies there was also some activity in the churches. The most creative leadership came from the American Baptists. Jitsuo Morikawa gathered around him a group of imaginative younger Christians (including Harvey Cox, at one time), and with them he initiated a program they called Evangelistic Life Styles. Sadly, the term evangelistic is used more often in other ways, but in that usage it meant bringing truly good news of God's salvific work in the world against the background of realistic assessment of what our current activities were doing to the Earth. It gained the support of the denomination as a whole, and I am sure that it had an impact in many congregations. But the institution was not significantly affected at either the local or the national level. For the most part, this program, too, has faded into history.

I worked closely with Morikawa for a number of years, and I learned much from him. I learned that even within our present institutional structures a bureaucrat with vision and political skills can bring about changes that are genuinely Christian. But I also saw how costly such success is, and how easily patterns revert to normal when the energy and creativity of the unusual leader is removed.

From time to time Morikawa talked to me about the importance of a theology of institutions. At first I paid only polite attention. I had no idea what a theology of institutions would be, and I assumed that if there was anything to be done on such a topic, it was the task of my colleagues in sociology of religion or Christian ethics. But Morikawa thought otherwise, and by his persistence he opened my eyes.

After he had retired from his work with the American Baptists, and had retired again from an interim ministry at Riverside Church, he settled in Ann Arbor. In his self-effacing way he became a remarkably successful missionary to the thoroughly secular University of Michigan. His most visible achievements were arranging to bring Hans Kueng and Gustavo Guttierez to the univesity for extended and effective stays.

But he also wanted the leadership of the university to look at itself and its institution. On one occasion he arranged for me to address this leadership group. In the process of preparing to do so, I finally began to understand what a theology of institutions would be. It is a quite simple notion, but one that had eluded me all the same. Nor do I find that other theologians are accustomed to this mode of thinking.

A theology of institutions is an examination, from a Christian point of view, of the basic values and assumptions underlying institutional life, and, where these assumptions are found inadequate or inappropriate, it includes the proposal of alternatives. At least for me, a Christian point of view today takes seriously and centrally the fact that continuation of our present course of action will doom the world that God loves. Since none of our institutions were founded with this in view, all are vulnerable to criticism. Proposing different assumptions and then going on to implement them is the hard part.

I have focused exclusively on the one point that concern for sustainability played no part in the establishment of any of our institutions. But much more can be said. The assumptions underlying these institutions are also anthropocentric, androcentric, and Eurocentric. And the particular practices and patterns associated with these assumptions accentuate the contribution of all our institutions to the unsustainability of our society.

To summarize what I have said thus far, there will be no redirection away from the precipice toward which we are now heading without a reform of institutions. Such a reform requires critical reflection about the values and assumptions on which institutions in their present form exist. In all cases, among the assumptions underlying our institutions, a pervasive one is that the wider context in which they are set will endure. As a result, none of our institutions are structured for the purpose of changing this wider context so that it will be sustainable. Until they are so structured, history will continue on its self-destructive course.

But where can the reform of institutions begin? There is no easy place. Institutions are inherently conservative. They have survived by holding steadfastly to tested forms. They evolve very slowly in response to changing social patterns.

The main exceptions to these generalizations are those institutions that are most sensitive to the market. Competition in the market requires changes, often drastic ones. Businesses die, and new ones, taking different forms, are born. Unfortunately, market-driven change is not what is needed now. Businesses will change as shortages become acute, or as pollution leads to legislation that restricts them. Some will anticipate the increased demand for pollution controls and begin manufacturing them in anticipation. In this sense they can be proactive. But to expect business and industry proactively to adjust their basic structure for the sake of creating a sustainble society would be to misunderstand the nature of the market that dictates their actions. In any case, the market itself, as the more fundamental institution, changes very slowly.

There are nonprofit volunteer organizations that come into being around visions and the desire to implement them. Some of these are shaped fundamentally by the values and assumptions that I, as a Christian, affirm. It is not impossible that some of these now peripheral organizations can bring into being new institutions to replace the presently dominant religious, educational, legal, medical, political, and financial ones. In view of the conservatism built into existing institutions, this may be our only hope.

Nevertheless, it is worthwhile to continue the search for existing institutions whose values and assumptions include possibilities for self-criticism and reform despite the conservative tendencies built into them. When we examine isntitutions with this question in mind, the major candidates are the religious ones. Judaism and Christianity, in particular, are committed to ideals that function as a basis for self-criticism and reform. More and more religious organizations are recognizing the importance of the environment and making appropriate theological pronouncements. In principle they are calling for changes that imply their own reform.

Between such theoretical assertions by a few leaders and actual institutional changes there lies a great gap. A few local congregations may be experimenting with real reform, and these should be celebrated. But on the whole, the oldline churches, from which the best statements come, are struggling for their survival. Reform and restructuring are currently determined by this struggle rather than by proactive response to the needs of the world. There is not much likelihood of any denomination undertaking to reorder its life so as to contribute to the sustainability of life on the planet.

Apart from occasional local congregations, the most promising place to begin is with small educational institutions closely tied to the church. There is some renewal in small church-related colleges of a concern with the meaning of their church connection. What does it mean for them to be Christian? Are there ways that this should shape their mission, their curriculum, their internal structure? I am hopeful that in some cases this may lead to reordering their lives in light of the most urgent issues.

Theological schools provide the other avenue. Perhaps the question as to what their church-relationship means is asked less searchingly among us because of the apparent self-evidence of the answer: we are preparing ministerial leadership for the churches. Nevertheless, this need not exhaust the answer to the question. We can also ask: What kind of leadership do our churches need in a world heading for disaster? Our church relationship can also mean that we exist to serve in the church's mission to the world. It might mean that, in order to do this, we ourselves need to become Christian communities. In my understanding, following the World Council of Churches' earlier formulation, that would mean becoming communities that model just and sustainable patterns of life. I understand that our purpose in gathering here is to reflect on whether we do indeed have such a calling and, if so, what it would mean concretely to respond.

III

Most of us are more immediately involved in issues of gender, ethnic pluralism, and justice than in global environmental questions. The latter can seem a distraction from the immediacy of the former issues, which often have strong constituencies in our midst. These tensions have been part of the church's reflection for some time.

At the time of the United Nations Stockholm conference on the environment, the World Council of Churches remained aloof. It was deeply committed to justice for the Third World. Much of what environmentalists were saying seemed to call for a redirection of energies from issues of justice to those of preserving the environment. I have described how I was myself affected by my new awareness of what was happening to the planet as a whole. Some of the suspicion was justified.

The suspicion was often intensified by the fact that middle class persons from the First World sometimes seemed chiefly concerned with the aesthetic quality of their environment. I recall that my own town of Claremont set up a citizens' committee on the environment whose proposals were designed to enhance the quality of life for those affluent enough to live there. The recommended policies would have made Claremonters even more dependent on their automobiles and forced population growth into neighboring towns and orange groves.

Hence, the World Council and others were not entirely wrong to think that the environmental movement sometimes placed the enjoyment by the rich of a beuatiful environment above meeting the basic needs of the poor. To some, the environmental movement was another First World trick to block the economic development of the Third World. Nevertheless, the Stockholm conference itself, the growing awareness that the poor are the first to suffer from environmental degradation, and the recognition that the crisis is of an ultimate character for all, brought the World Council around. At Nairobi in 1975 the Assembly added the word "sustainable" to its call for a just and participatory society. At Vancouver the analogous phrase was "the integrity of creation."

Whereas in contexts other than the church, interest in the environment has sometimes been separated from concern for justice, this has not happened in the church. The title of our gathering might suggest otherwise: "theological education to meet the environmental challenge." But the subtitle reassures us: "toward just and sustainable communities." The Christian task forces dealing with the environmental crisis have typically borne such names as "eco-justice."

The problem has been to integrate these two concerns rather than to have them lie side by side in tension. In my opinion, the work of the World Council on this subject has been good. In the book I wrote with Charles Birch, a leader in World Council deliberations, the three concluding chapters argued in a variety of contexts that only a just society is sustainable and only a sustainable society is just. We tried to show quite concretely how, again and again, the reforms that make for justice make for sustainability and the reforms that make for sustainability make for justice. Within the church, there is little danger that environmental concerns will work against the cause of justice.

Nevertheless, any school of theology that engages in serious reflection about reshaping itself in ways appropriate to the environmental challenge will face difficult problems. Despite the positive relation of justice and sustainability, priorities dictated by the immediacy of pain felt by victims of injustice can be in tension with those derived from an overview of how a just and sustainable community should shape its life.

This brings me to another theme. The slogan emerging from Nairobi in 1975 was "the just, participatory, and sustainable society." When Birch and I wrote our book we simplified by treating "participatory" as an essential feature of being "just." The term "eco-justice," likewise makes no explicit reference to participation. The new slogan formulated in Vancouver omits "participatory" in calling for "peace, justice, and the integrity of creation." The subtitle of this conference speaks only of justice and sustainability.

I am not supposing that any of us intend to reject the reality of participation when we drop the word. With respect to the subtitle of this conference, paticipation is clearly implied in the word "community." Nevertheless, the failure to highlight the importance of participation could have negative consequences.

Impatient as I am to see radical changes made, I have also come to realize that changes are sustainable only if they are made through processes of widespread participation. Indeed, today I would be more inclined to simplify the earlier slogan of the World Council to "participatory and sustainable," subsuming justice under participation, than to subsume participation under justice, as I did earlier. Different communities understand justice differently. Simply calling for justice can be one more way in which some of us impose our ideas on the practice of others. Those of us shaped by the Enlightenment, for example, often think of justice in quite individualistic ways alien to persons of some other cultures. On the other hand, if the others participate equally with us in shaping the community, the result will embody some acceptable form of justice.

Whereas I believe that within the church the tension between justice and sustainablity has been fundamentally resolved, this may not yet be the case between participation and sustainability. Participatory decision-making may not lead to outcomes that favor sustainability. The outcome depends on who is participating and the nature of their commitments. One reason that institutional change did not occur in the seventies was that most people treated the environment as one issue on a list that included higher priorities. When the people making the decision think that way, wide participation in decisions will not redirect institutions toward sustainability. In that earlier context, those who thought as I did could act only in marginal ways.

It is my hope that in the 1990's, at least in some of our schools, the situation has changed. The awareness of the pervasiveness and finality of the environmental crisis is now more widely shared. Those who focus primarily on the liberation of particular oppressed people or on other specific causes are usually not indifferent to the fate of the Earth. There may be sufficient consensus on the urgency of developing a sustainable society to achieve agreement on some elements of institutional reform for which only a few were ready in the seventies.

But this does not mean that we should try for reform based on this area of agreement alone. The reform that is needed requires the engagement of people in terms of their primary and most immediate concerns as well as their acknowledgment of this comprehensive one. Only this inclusiveness will make the reform genuinely participatory. The reform of institutions must be sensitive to all the particular concerns of the groups who make it up as well as the shared commitment to sustainability.

There is a second reason to hope that the nineties may allow for changes for which we were not ready in the seventies. This is because we have been deeply affected for two decades by the various liberation theologies and especially by feminism. Feminists have persistently awakened us to the depth to which patriarchy shapes all our disciplines, the disciplinary style of thinking in general, our way of teaching, and the hierarchical structure of our institutions, as well as our ignoring of the consequences of our actions for the Earth. Some feminists have gone beyond critique and deconstruction to explore alternatives. They are far ahead of most non-feminist environmentalists. Most of what they have proposed, and to some extent implemented, stands ready for employment by the whole institution if it wants to transform itself into a just and sustainable community.

The just and sustainable communities that we want to become must be participatory. Furthermore, the way of moving towards them must be participatory. This process takes time and energy. It can lead to failure with respect to its initial goals. But it is the only way.

It may be relatively easy to get participation of faculty at the level of conversation. The problem here may be that we professors are all too accustomed to talking, but talk freely only because we are confident that no significant change is really demanded of us. The most difficult of all areas for reform is likely to be the curriculum. Unless we professors consider involvement in the theology of institutions to be as important as advancing our own disciplines and our careers within our guilds, little will happen. This means directing that we will be willing to direct our critical and constructive inquiry to the theological school itself.

The participation of the trustees in extended conversation may be the most difficult to secure, simply because the school is not the place of their primary involvement. In addition, they are likely to raise some of the most difficult questions. Within the present institution they are charged with the responsibility to find the money to support the institution. The sorts of reforms that may be proposed by students, faculty, and staff may seem to them to make their job more difficult, even impossible. They cannot responsibly support changes that will lead to the demise of the institution.

The other components of the seminary community will have to acknowledge the validity of the concerns expressed by trustees. The tendency to assume that trustees are "conservative" and that they reject new ideas for that reason alone is unfair. Many of them are at least as committed Christians, serving the seminary out of love of the church, as are any other members of the community. Trustees who are confronted with proposals for radical reforms which they have not participated in shaping will be justifiably suspicious that they are unrealistic. But if they are part of the process throughout, there can be hope both that the reforms proposed will be truly practicable and that they will be recognized as such by the trustees.

In most cases, the community that must participate in shaping a participatory community committed to justice and sustainability will include representatives of the denominations most involved in the school. Institutional reform is not likely to succeed if the churches with which the school is most closely related to do not feel ownership. Sometimes the key persons will already be among the trustees, but in many instances other church people should be involved.

It is obvious that this kind of process will not take place unless there is general awareness of the need for change, on the one hand, and strong commitment on the part of key people. Unless becoming what we are called to be is our first priority, it will not happen. The cost in time and energy to already overworked people is simply too great. One major reason that institutions are inherently conservative is that continuing in existing ruts is far easier and less demanding than asking searching questions and allowing ourselves to be reshaped by the answers.

But any institution that risks entering such a process could also stand to gain. Even if the outcome falls far short of the just and sustainable communities for which we hope, the interaction among the many groups involved, the deeper levels of reflection, and the heightened understanding would by themselves move the institution some steps toward the just and sustainable community. The process insures some elements of the product.

If what emerged out of a process in which the church participated was recognized by the church as a just and sustainable community, the enthusiasm and support of the church would surely be enhanced. The possibility of considering analogous changes in other church institutions, even including the denomination as such, would arise. A true renewal of the church might ensue. This is what I had in mind at the outset when I said that this gathering could be an historic event.

I have proposed an ideal pattern of participation. That ideal is both necessary and dangerous. It is dangerous because it can easily be misunderstood.

One form of misunderstanding would be to suppose that for it to work everyone involved in the institution must take an active part. This will never happen, and disappointment that it does not happen can sour the process if there are false expectations. The process should be open, and those most involved should be representative of the diverse constituencies. They should also be in touch with many of those they represent to encourage their interest and support, elicit their ideas, and mediate these to the core discussion. Town meetings and other devices will be required in order to become sensitive to the concerns of persons other than the core participants. But the community should not hope for the impossible. Constituents will not feel ownership of the process if they are not confident that their voices are heard. But most of them will not, indeed, cannot, commit the time and energy for full particiption throughout.

A second form of misunderstanding is that a participatory process reduces the role of leadership. On the contrary, it requires more leadership, and more skilled leadership, than does a hierarchical style. Without skilled leaders deeply committed to the goal and the process, the result will be failure. Such leadership is not limited to facilitating the larger group. It includes the introduction of proposals for discussion and pushing for practical agreements when the discussion indicates that there is a chance that these may have wide support.

A third misunderstanding could be that all the desires of all the participants could eventually be harmonized in a universally satisfactory conclusion. If participants judge the outcome primarily by how fully their primary agenda are implemented, there is not much hope for change. They have the right to expect that their concerns will be heard and that the outcome will be affected by the group's desire to deal with them. But only if participants have a lively sense of the limits of what is possible, of the need to bargain and compromise as well as to arrive at solutions that meet the needs of all, in short, of the creatureliness of all of us and of all our institutions, can reform take place. Expecting too much blocks change as effectively as expecting too little. When measured by perfectionist standards, the result of the best reform will fall far short, especially since one person's perfection seems oppressive to others.

Since I am emphasizing the process by which a just and sustainable community comes into being, and since that process is a participatory one, it would be quite inappropriate for me to say what the resulting community would look like. On the other hand, since I have also said that leadership includes introducing proposals to be discussed rather than simply facilitating other people in expressing their concerns, it may be appropriate to note some of the topics that could be considered. I will list sixteen. I am sure you can add others.

First, there is the content of the curriculum. To what extent is it shaped by awareness of the most pressing needs of the world? Does it offer a vision of a just and sustainable community. To what extent does it motivate students to lead in forming such communities and enable them to do so? To what extent does it help them to understand both how the existing church blocks appropriate response and also its resources for metanoia? To what extent should students participate in determining the curriculum? What role should the church play? If we cannot truly rethink the curriculum, so that the horizon of all of the teaching is the reality of the world in which ministry occurs, any other changes that are made will be unsustainable.

Second, there is the method of instruction. This is the most threatening area for me personally, and it may be that I bring it up now only because I am at the end of my career. I have enjoyed conventional lecturing and seminar discussion. I am not persuaded that these are always poor forms of teaching. But I am persuaded, in spite of my habits and prejudices, that there are other ways of involving students that are more empowering, that my style models a way of relating that is inferior to others, in short, that many of the methods others are using are more appropriate for a just, participatory, and sustainable community. In particular, we need to ask: Is the content and style of instruction sensitive to the ethnic diversity of the students? Does it meet their differing needs and involve them in ways that are appropriate to their cultural differences? If it undertakes to help them transcend their cultures, does it do so in accordance with their own desire to do so?

Third, there is the matter of how we worship. Can worship perform its function of building community around a shared love of God and the world? Can it open us up to one another, or does it become one more source of division? Can it overcome the deep seated habits of associating God with the individual human soul and reestablish the self-evidence of God's primary relationship to the world? Can it manifest and internalize the unity of the concern for the oppressed and for the Earth?

Fourth, there are questions of hiring practices. Is affirmative action working satisfactorily? Should special consideration be given to having a faculty and staff that in some way mirror the ethnic diversity within the student body? Should concern for the Earth become a requirement of those to be appointed? How otherwise can reforms be sustained? What about the membership of the Board of Trustees?

Fifth, there are questions of rank, tenure, and salary? Do the differences between tenured and non-tenured faculty and the different ranks contribute to a just and sustainable community or inhibit its development? Are salary differences within the faculty, within the staff, and between faculty and staff appropriate or damaging? Are there any ways to establish salaries other than market competition? How open should the budgeting process be to the various segments of the seminary community?

Sixth, there are questions about the relation of employment and finance to the students. Could or should students constitute a larger portion of the employees of the School, reducing their need to work elsewhere? Would that enhance community or hurt it? Could seminaries organize themselves so that financial pressures on students would be reduced and more of them could give primary attention to their participation in the life of the school? Can this participation become a central part of their preparation for ministry?

Seventh, there is the governance of the institution, the separation of powers among students, faculty, staff, and trustees. Can we find ways of governance that allow for greater participation of the whole community without making undue demands on participants or clouding the diversity of roles and responsibilities within the institution? Can we gain greater mutual appreciation and respect through freer interaction?

Eighth, there is the question of the funding of the institution and the investment of its resources. If funding is now dependent on sources that resist institutional change, can these sources participate in discussions that would reassure them about such change? Can other sources of funding be found who would be enthusiastic about a just and sustainable community? Can investments be withdrawn from companies whose role works against justice and sustainability? Or can the trustees use the institution's investments to work for change within such companies? Can money be invested in small, local businesses, especially minority ones or even in student-operated businesses meeting the needs of the community?

Ninth, there are buildings and grounds. When new buildings are constructed, can they be designed to make minimum use of scarce resources? Can they be built so as to encourage community among those who occupy them? Can old buildings be remodeled to such ends? Can the grounds be planted in ways that reduce the pressure on resources -- such as water in dry areas or the need for air conditioning where it is hot? Is maximum use being made of solar energy for heating and cooling as well as for hot water? Are there other ways that some of the energy needed on campus can be produced locally?

Tenth, there are purchasing policies. Can the school meet more of its requirements through purchase of locally produced goods? For example, can more of the food served on campus be grown on local farms? Can the school support those farmers who are growing food organically? Can places be found on campus to grow some food there? Can the school engage in affirmative action with regard to purchasing from small minority businesses? Can we avoid supporting unjust and unsustainable ways of producing food? Can faculty, students, and staff also arrange their purchases with similar considerations in mind?

Eleventh, there are other questions about the food served on campus. What role should meat play in the diet? Are there reasons to avoid meat altogether or at least to eat further down on the food chain? Can we avoid supporting those forms of factory farming that cause extreme suffering to animals? Should there be an effort to introduce the whole community to the foods of different cultural groups represented within it?

Twelfth, there are still other questions about the use of resources in the functioning of the community. Can we not only recycle but also reduce the amount of paper and metals used in the academic and business life of the school? Can we avoid so much packaging? To take the use of paper as an example of our institutional consumptive habits, must papers be written on only one side of a page? Must they be double spaced? Can they use the backs of used paper? Do we need as many copies of documents as we typically make? Can modern technology substitute for so much use of paper instead of increasing it? Do we need as many copies of documents as we make? Can we dry our hands on less paper?

Thirteenth, there are other issues of lifestyle. Can or should life on the campus become more communal? Should this reflect cultural lines, or should there be more experiments in cross-cultural intentional community? Can changed lifestyles be a means of living more cheaply and reducing financial pressures on students and on the school budget? Can changes of this sort have an effect on faculty and staff as well?

Fourteenth, there are questions about the nature of student life and organization. Should the community strive to integrate each student directly into its total life, or should it affirm instead a diversity of caucuses or groups within it? In short, should it aim to be a single community, or should it model itself as a community of communities? How can it best implement either goal? If caucuses continue to be needed in a just and sustainable community, will the new context affect their self-understanding? Can their present focus on grievances shift to a more constructive one?

Fifteenth, there are questions about how a seminary relates to other schools of theology. Is this relation primarily competitive? Does this competition cost each seminary money that could do more for the church and the world if it were spent cooperatively? Can just and sustainable communities develop just and sustainable relations with one another? For example, can recruitment for ministry become more cooperative and less competitive?

Sixteenth, there are questions about how faculty members relate to their guilds. If we learn to teach with different foci and emphases, perhaps with less isolation from one another and more emphasis on the needs of students, the church, and the world, can we affect the ways in which our guilds function? Can the academic disciplines themselves be reformed? Or can ways of organizing inquiry and teaching other than through traditional disciplines actually replace the disciplinary and guild systems?

VII

I have one specific proposal that would apply both to the process of working towards just and sustainable community and also to the curriculum that would eventuate. It is that courses be designed for the study of the institution itself. In my opinion, a just and sustainable community must be one that is continuously reflective about its own nature. It is also my observation that the one object of study most assiduously avoided in contemporary higher education is higher education itself, and especially the institutions that provide it. We, in theological schools, devote considerable attention to a critical study of the church. Thus far we have devoted almost none to a critical study of ourselves. This brings us back to the importance of self-study as the central way to engage in a theology of institutions.

One example of self-study has been provided by David Orr at Hendrix College, and now, I understand, at Oberlin. I hope that Jay McDaniel will tell us more about this. It is my understanding that it concentrated on purchasing policies of the school and came up with proposals that enabled the school to buy more local products. Examining the actual social and ecological effects of the institution upon its environment proved to be an important contribution to the education of the students as well as to the improvement of the institution.

Obviously this is not the only feature of a school of theology the examination of which would be highly educational to students. All of the topics I have suggested for discussion, as a seminary seeks to become a just and sustainable community, could also be considered in seminars. Indeed, having groups of students devote part of their regular study time to pursuing these questions could facilitate the process greatly. These students would also be gaining practical skills for understanding and reforming the institutions in which they will subsequently serve.

VIII

In conclusion, let me summarize my basic theses.

l. The deep changes needed in our world cannot occur without the self-reform of major institutions.

2. These institutions are inherently conservative and resistant to such changes.

3. The church is one institution that does engage regularly in self-criticism and from time to time reforms itself.

4. Today there is very little prospect that any of our oldline denominations are in position to engage in such reform.

5. However, some of the smaller institutions affiliated with the church may be in position to do so.

6. Seminaries are among the most important of such institutions.

7. If reform begins in seminaries, it could spread.

8. Such reform requires a depth of reflection and a breadth of participation that are difficult, but not impossible, to secure.

9. The experience of raising fundamental questions about who we are in a participatory context will be inherently valuable even if we do not succeed in all respects in becoming just and sustainable communities.

I do not intend to say that the fate of the world rests on our weak shoulders. However limited our work, it is my hope that God use our efforts to counter the movement toward self-destruction. If we decline to respond to God's call, I hope that God can find some other channel for transforming and redeeming activity. But I long to see us both try and succeed. I do believe in all seriousness that those of us in seminaries are in a strategic place for working with God for the salvation of the world. I hope our weariness and fear will not deafen us to the call to risk and dare. May God bless you all.

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