The One Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church: Reflections on the Understanding of the Church in an Ecumenical Horizon

I am working on a paper for a Lutheran World Federation international conference hosted by the Department for Theology and Studies that will meet at the Ecumenical Institute in Bossey, Switzerland, June 12-16, 2008. The topic is "The One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church." Theologians from around the globe have been invited to offer various perspectives on this topic. Interestingly, very little scholarship has been done on the creedal marks of the church from a Lutheran perspective.

The conference is organized into three sections:

I. Historical Perspectives: The soteriological relevance of the Church
II. Denominational Perspectives on the Church
III. Global Perspectives

I am speaking in the third section to offer a North American Lutheran perspective on the Nicene marks of the church. The other global perspectives will be from Ethiopia, Malaysia and Southeast Asia, Southern Africa and South America. My paper will 1) relate the Nicene marks to the classic Lutheran marks of the church as "word and sacrament;" and 2) suggest reading the Nicene marks in a reverse order as proposed by Darrell Guder (see his paper, "The Nicene Marks in a Post-Christendom Church") for a North American context "in order to restore missional purpose to our theology of the church."

An LWF Contribution to the Understanding and Practice of Mission

While I am at it, here is an another helpful LWF (Lutheran World Federation) resource: Mission in Context: Transformation, Reconciliation, Empowerment: An LWF Contribution to the Understanding and Practice of Mission. This document, published in 2004, can be downloaded as a PDF file.

More Reports on Empire Seminar

The Lutheran World Federation this week issued a press release on our seminar: "Theologians Propose Responses to Counter Empire."

One of participants, Michael Hoy, offers his reflections on the seminar in "Thursday Theology #474: The Confessing Church in the Midst of Empire." Thursday Theology is part of the ministry of the Crossings Community of which Michael is a member.

Being the Church in the Midst of Empire: An Initial Report

I just returned from the LWF Seminar, "Confessing and Living Faith in the Triune God: Being the Church in the Midst of Empire." The impetus for the seminar came in part from the work that the Reformed churches are doing on this issue. Some Lutherans participated in the ecumenical consultation sponsored by the World Alliance of Reformed Churches held in Manila, July 13-15, 2006, that resulted in this document: An Ecumenical Faith Stance Against Global Empire. In the same year, the United Church in Canada issued the statement "Living Faithfully in the Midst of Empire"(also known as "The Empire Report"), that was drawn from background papers by Douglas John Hall ("Christianity and Empire"), Ofelia Ortega ("When the Empire Lies, People Suffer, They are Exploited, and Life Becomes Death"), Nestor O. Miguez ("Jesus and Empire: Then and Now"). [Note: Miguez has also written "The Empire and After: Biblical Hope in the Midst of Oppression."]

One of the topics of conversation, of course, had to do with defining what is meant by "empire." Some members of the seminar cited the book Empire by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri--which stipulates "empire" as a supranational global-network of sovereignty--rather than a single country (e.g. the US). The Global Policy Forum offers many excellent resources on the question of the US as empire; this link examines the concept of empire in political discourse today and provides a general analysis of the unilateralist agenda of the US. A wide range of materials are posted, including articles from pro-imperialists (e.g. The Project for a New American Century) and critics of empire, as well as those that debate whether it is appropriate to attribute the term "empire" to the US. Other perspectives are offered in articles by Ivo Daalder and James Lindsay, "American Empire, Not 'If,' But 'What Kind';" and Michael Walzer, "Is there an American Empire?"

However empire is defined, we all agreed that it is important for theologians to wrestle with the disturbing features of this emerging economic and political reality, such as the unlimited quest for power and profit (if not territory) and the avoidance of moral accountability. This is especially important, because as Karen Bloomquist (who convened this seminar) noted, “From the outside, Christians in the US seem mostly silent and complicit with the assumptions and policies of empire, reinforced by expressions of religiosity that are the handmaiden to empire.”

Because of the theme, the seminar met in the U.S. and a number of U.S. scholars were invited to participate; however, those of us from the US were joined by several scholars from the global south which led to a rich conversation on the topic. To give a sense of voices around the table and the variety of perspectives that were heard, I will list the names of the participants and hyperlink an article or book review (if one could be found on-line):

Charles Amjad-Ali (Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN); Evangeline Anderson-Rajkumar (United Theological College, Banglaore, India); Karen Bloomquist (Director of the Department for Theology and Studies, LWF); Hans-Peter Grosshans (Evangelisch-theologische Fakultät Tübingen, Germany--but soon to join the LWF DTS staff); Guillermo (Willy) Hansen (Instituto Superior Evangelico de Estudios Teologicos, Buenos Aires, Argentina); John Hoffmeyer (Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, PA); Michael Hoy (St. Louis, MO); Allen Jorgensen (Waterloo Lutheran Seminary, Waterloo, Ontario); Peter Lodberg (Aarhus Universitet, Denmark); Deenabandhu Manchala (Faith and Order, World Council of Churches); Cynthia Moe-Lobeda (Seattle University); Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer (University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, MN); Cheryl Peterson (Trinity Lutheran Seminary, Columbus, OH); Gary Simpson (Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN); Bill Strehlow (Geneva); Deanna Thompson (Hamline University, St. Paul, MN).

Also participating were several international graduate students: Mary Joy Philip (India) from LSTC, and several from Luther Seminary: Faith Lugazia (Tanzania), Elieshi Mungure (Tanzania), Margaret Obaga (Kenya), and Johannes Swart (South Africa). Unfortunately, two South African scholar/church leaders, Musawenkosi Biyela and Puleng Lenka Bula, who had been invited to participate were not able to attend.

We discussed our papers for the first two days and on the third day we explored how our papers relate to one another and suggested revisions, in preparation for an LWF book that is anticipated for publication later this year.

Being the Church in the Midst of Empire

I am working on a paper for a seminar of the Lutheran World Federation that will meet in St. Paul, Minnesota at the end of June. The theme of the seminar is "Confessing and Living out Faith in the Triune God: Being the Church in the Midst of Empire." This consultation is part of the larger theological initiative of the LWF, "Theology in the Life of the Church: Confessing and Living out Faith in the Triune God."

The purpose of this seminar is "to probe and further develop key theological motifs (especially as interpreted through Lutheran lenses) that are counter to the assumptions, power dynamics, and outcomes operating under empire and can nurture resistance to such, especially in and through local churches." Approximately 15 Lutheran theologians will participate, at least six from outside the U.S. My paper will focus on the subtitle "being the church in the midst of empire." Up this this point, my work on ecclesiology has focused more on mission and witness in terms of evangelistic outreach. These concerns, of course, are not unrelated to "being the church" in the midst of empire; even so, I am glad for the opportunity to think about ecclesiology more explicitly in light of this reality.

There is an increasing amount of material available on the theme of empire, much of it by biblical scholars. A couple of background articles were suggested to us in preparation for the seminar, including "Paul's Gospel and Caesar's Empire" by N.T. Wright and "Up Against Caesar: Jesus and Paul against Empire" by John Dart.

In my research for my paper, I also found this piece by William Cavanaugh: "The Empire of the Empty Shrine: American Imperialism and the Church." This was his keynote address to the 2005 annual gathering of the Ekklesia Project. [For those unfamiliar with Cavanaugh, he is part of the newer theological movement called "Radical Orthodoxy." Several of his articles can be found on-line via this link.]