June 28, 2015

Chapter 9 – Ethics: Kingdom Quest

A People’s History of Christianity

How the ethical practices of the church changed during the 1800s and the 1900s – the last two centuries.

We’ll be looking at the following ethical ways the church changed during that time period:ToleranceEqualityFreedomProgressEcumenismReligionless Christianity

What are we talking about today?

Through much of the early church, ethics amounted to charity, aiding the distressed, or alleviating the suffering of the poor.

Only rarely did it occur to Christians at the time that they might actually be able to change the conditions that create poverty, violence , and oppression.

There is a good reason for this: Christians mostly accepted social structures as part of God’s divine order.

Christian ethics up to this point tended to serve more as a “band-aid” for those most harmed by poverty, illness, and war.

This changes dramatically in the modern period. Why?

Ethics: Kingdom Quest

Christians understood that the social order was not necessarily a divine construct – that it was riddled with sin – and that they could fix earthly structures to more fully resemble God’s desire for humanity to live.

Why the change?

Church of St. Martin’s in Biberach, Germany.St. Martin's was built in 1337-1366 and served as the parish church of Biberach before the Reformation. With the conversion of almost the entire population of the town to Lutheran Protestantism, the church was used for Lutheran services. Then, in 1548 the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V ordered that Catholic services be resumed. The solution was to divide the church, with Catholic services held in the

former choir and Lutheran services in the larger nave.

Tolerance: respecting the differences among Christian denominations

Tolerance: St. Martin’s Biberach, GermanyThe service schedule was as follows: 5 AM – Catholic

6 AM – Lutheran8 AM- Catholic11 AM – Lutheran12 PM – Catholic

This church is an example of finding a way to peaceful coexistence and toleration.

Like tolerance, the idea of equality was not sonsidered a virtue for much of Christian history.

Bass: “A few verses in the New Testament – like Galatians 3:28 ‘There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus’ – lay fallow in scripture for many centuries before anyone cared to water the seeds of equality planted in that verse.”

Following the reformation, women started to point our the inconsistency of male clergy proclaiming spiritual liberty from Rome, yet still telling women to be silent in church.

Equality

The first American woman to speak to a mixed audience of men and women, whites and black, Stewart was also the first African-American woman to make public lectures, as well as to lecture about women’s rights and make a public anti-slavery speech. The Liberator published two pamphlets by Stewart: "Religion and Pure Principles of Morality, the Sure Foundation on Which We Must Build" (which advocated abolition and black autonomy) and another of religious meditations.

Many American Christians during this time used scripture enforce inequality, often quoting Ephesians 5:22 to remind women to “be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord.” They also used Ephesians 6:5 to justify slavery: “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart, as you obey Christ.”

Equality: Maria Stewart (1803 – 1879)

Tubman was born into slavery, though escaped at age 29. Her family remained slaves, and Harriet felt compelled to rescue them. Tubman secretly returned to Maryland where her niece was to be sold, and arranged for her release. Tubman was a daring conductor on the underground railroad, with bounties on her head totaling around $40,000. She returned to Maryland again and again,

ultimately liberating more than seventy slaves.

Freedom: Harriet Tubman(1820 – 1913)

At the turn of the 20th century, Tubman became heavily involved with the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in Auburn. In 1903, she donated a parcel of real estate she owned to the church, under the instruction that it be made into a home for "aged and indigent colored people. The Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged celebrated its opening on June 23, 1908.

As Tubman aged, seizures, headaches, and suffering from childhood head trauma continued to plague her. At some point in the late 1890s, she underwent brain surgery at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital. Unable to sleep because of pains and "buzzing" in her head, she asked a doctor if he could operate. He agreed and, in her words, "sawed open my skull, and raised it up, and now it feels more comfortable.“ She had received no anesthesia for the procedure and reportedly chose instead to bite down on a bullet, as she had seen Civil War soldiers do when their limbs were amputated.

By 1911, her body was so frail that she had to be admitted into the rest home named in her honor. A New York newspaper described her as "ill and penniless," prompting supporters to offer a new round of donations.

Surrounded by friends and family members, Harriet Tubman died of pneumonia in 1913. Just before she died, she told those in the room: "I go to prepare a place for you."

Freedom: Harriet Tubman(1820 – 1913)

Tubman is recognized in the Episcopal Calendar of saints each year. Her feast day is July 20.This photo dates from 1911, two before her death.

Freedom: Harriet Tubman(1820 – 1913)

Fosdick was a Baptist pastor and an outspoken opponent of racism and injustice. Alleged victim Ruby Bates credited him with persuading her to testify for the defense in the 1933 retrial of the infamous and racially charged legal case of the Scottsboro Boys in which nine black youths were tried before all white juries for raping white women, Bates and her companion, Victoria Price in Alabama. Fosdick's sermons won him wide recognition as did his radio addresses which were nationally broadcast. He authored numerous books, and many of his sermon collections are still in print. He is also the author

of the hymn, "God of Grace and God of Glory“. (H 594 and 595)

Progress: Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878 – 1969)

While at First Presbyterian Church, on May 21, 1922, he delivered his famous sermon “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?”, in which he presented the Bible as a record of the unfolding of God’s will, not as the literal "Word of God". He saw the history of Christianity as one of development, progress, and gradual change. To the fundamentalists, this was rank apostasy, and the battle lines were drawn.

Fosdick saw no contradiction between evolution as taught by Charles Darwin, and Christian faith. For Fosdick, religion is the primary way to interpret scientific fact.

Progress: Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878 – 1969)

Roger Schütz, popularly known as Brother Roger, was a Swiss Christian leader and founder of the Taize community, and ecumenical monastic community in France. In 1940, he felt called to serve those suffering from the conflict, as his maternal grandmother had done during World War I. He rode a bicycle from Geneva to Taizé, about

390 kilometers southeast of Paris. The town was then located within unoccupied France, just beyond the line of demarcation from the zone occupied by German troops. He bought an empty house, where for two years he and his sister, Genevieve, hid refugees, both Christian and Jewish, before being forced to leave Taizé, after being tipped off that the Gestapo had become aware of their activities. In 1944, he returned to Taizé to found the Community, initially a small quasi-monastic community of men living together in poverty and obedience, open to all Christians.

Ecumenism:Brother Roger (1915 – 2005)

Since the late 1950s, many thousands of young adults from many countries have found their way to Taizé to take part in weekly meetings of prayer and reflection.

All his life, Roger devoted himself to reconciling the different Christian churches.

Ecumenism:Brother Roger (1915 – 2005)

Brother Roger was stabbed to death during the evening prayer service in Taizé on August 16, 2005 by a young woman named who was later deemed mentally ill. He was stabbed several times and, though one of the brothers carried him from the church, he died shortly afterward.

In a highly unusual move, the funeral of this Protestant monk was presided over by a Catholic cardinal, Walter Kasper, who celebrated the Mass with four priest-brothers of Taizé concelebrating. In his homily he said, "Yes, the springtime of ecumenism has flowered on the hill of Taizé."[

Ecumenism:Brother Roger (1915 – 2005)

Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor who helped to start the Confessing Church in Germany During World War II. The Confessing Church stood proudly against the state church of Germany under Hitler’s rule.

Religionless Christianity:Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906 – 1945)

Bonhoeffer was arrested by the Gestapo for his involvement in the Valkyrie plot to assasinate Hitler.

Halfway through his imprisonment, he wrote in a letter smuggled out of prison: “What is Christianity, and indeed, what is Christ, for us today?” He wondered if Christianity was over as a religion. In the midst of the Reich church of the State, Bonhoeffer thought religion no longer made any sense and that it may have been just the “garment of Christianity.” He then wrote, “what is a religionless Christianity?

Unfortunately, Bonhoeffer never lived to finish his thoughts on how he saw Christianity changing.

Religionless Christianity:Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906 – 1945)

Bonhoeffer is remembered today for the Jewish lives he saved by smuggling them out of Germany.Although Bonhoeffer was hung in prison, his writings continue his legacy of faith and his desire to see a modern church that speaks to the people of this age. In the Episcopal Church, his feast day is April

9, the day following his death.

Religionless Christianity:Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906 – 1945)

Next week: Chapter Twelve – The River