Ethics: Kingdom Quest

1. June 28, 2015
Chapter 9 – Ethics: Kingdom Quest

2.  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:
 Tolerance
 Equality
 Freedom
 Progress
 Ecumenism
 Religionless Christianity

3.  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?

4.  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.

5.  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.

6.  The service schedule was as follows:
5 AM – Catholic
6 AM – Lutheran
8 AM - Catholic
11 AM – Lutheran
12 PM – Catholic
This church is an example of finding a way to peaceful
coexistence and toleration.

7.  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.

8.  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.”

9.  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.

10.  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."

11.  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.

12.  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)

13.  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.

14.  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 toTaizé, 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.

15.  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.

16.  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."[

18.  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.

19.  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.

20.  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.