What makes a leader? Ideas. Courage. Contact with great thinkers. What makes a Christian leader? Great ideas, courage, and contact with great thinkers re-shaped and shaped by the gospel. 

So, I offer to you a list of my top ten books for leaders, and none of the titles of these books have the word "leader," or its buddy "leadership," in it. Some of these are overtly Christian classics; others are not. These books have the ability to swell the chest, flood the mind, and reshape how we see the world around us - and a gospel-reshaping of these great works can inspire a leader to new levels.

From the classical world, though one could choose all sorts of great works, I recommend a soaking in Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, to see how the great philosopher constructed a set of ethics that shaped the Western world. Homer told the story of Odysseus and Virgil, in The Aeneid, developed what Homer began for the Roman world and handed on to all of us the power of a journey into ideas and ideals, sanctifying place and history. Dante took Homer and Virgil to the next level in his Divine Comedy, and if you follow him all the way down into the inferno, up through purgatory and then climb into the swirling glorious presence of God you will find new dimensions to life's journey.

I've heard the case made that St. Augustine's Confessions reshaped the entire Western world, not least in his probing of his own soul and conscience, but I'm confident that the great North Afrian can lead each of us to the potent truth of original sin and the need to read our lives before God. Not long ago I began to re-read John Milton, Paradise Lost, and was mesmerized not only by his language and meter, but by the brilliance of his vision for the cosmic battle of human life. 

No one on this side of the Atlantic can fail to be captured, humbled and even humiliated before God by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin, as it brings into living reality the evil of slavery and the heart of darkness, a heart that was eschewed by the arch-individiual, Henry David Thoreau in On Walden Pond. Americans need to dip into this classic work of human independence and freedom if only to capture again what makes so many Americans still tick. Hemingway said Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was the great American novel. I'm not expert enough on American novels to pose such a conclusion, but I can say that very few have probed more deeply the foibles of the human heart, whether Twain does so with withering wit or raw finger-pointing.

For some reason few today have read C.S. Lewis, Dymer, his first work, a saga, a journey, and a portrait of human hybris at its apex - and the work provides for us a revelation of what Lewis was like, what his yearning was like, before it became Surprised by Joy. I confess to being one of the few who have not read all of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings - I have read The Hobbit - but I return regularly to his short story, "Leaf by Niggle," and often wonder if there is a better way of describing our vocation and its relation to eternity. Every summer, somehow, I find my way to Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea, and whether it is the combination of the hunt with baseball in the old man's musings or not, the struggle to catch and never show what one found ... Hemingway reminds me of the intangibles of the human struggle. Probably the deepest and penetrating book I read during my seminary days was Martin Buber's I and Thou, a philosophical, theological essay into the relational nature of what matters most.

Not your usual list of books on leadership, but I wonder sometimes if leadership might best be described by those who are intellectual and cultural leaders instead of by those who talk about it.

Gracious God, the comfort of all who sorrow, the strength of all who suffer: Let the cry of those in misery and need come to you, that they may find your mercy present with them in all their afflictions; and give us, we pray, the strength to serve them for the sake of him who suffered for us, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Tuesday I began a series of posts looking at Harvey Cox's new book The Future of Faith. Today I would like to look at Chapter 3 - Ships Already Launched. Cox begins this chapter by dismissing the idea that all religions are the same. We all live with mystery, but how we cope varies.

I frequently meet people who, when they discover that I teach religion, assure me that "underneath, all religions are really the same." I used to respond that, during a lifetime of teaching religion it appeared to me that they are not. But since that usually ended the conversation on a disagreeable note, I have recently just let their opinions pass. It is true that we are all responding to the same mystery, the one that confronts us all not just as mortal beings, but as beings aware of our mortality. Still we sense it and cope with the mystery in quite disparate ways. (p. 38)

Cox then begins to describe, as he says, "the ship I found myself on" - the narrative of the Judeo-Christian tradition. And this leads me to the questions for today. 

Are all religions the same?

But a simple answer of no isn't enough.  Most of us consider ourselves Christian (certainly I do) - some will claim that this is this simply the luck of the draw and a matter of birth.  But the Christian is not willing to rest here - the whole NT especially the book of Acts is about God's mission and the proclamation and spread of the good news, inviting others to join The Way. 

Why is the gospel of Jesus Christ good news? What is there that is real, intrinsically worth proclaiming, to which we desire to invite others?

Why is Christianity not simply another way (one among many) of dealing with the mysteries of life, purpose, and mortality?

In this chapter Cox describes what he calls the three cycles of Christian tradition - contained in stories and ritual (even in low church protestants); the Hebrew cycle, the Christmas cycle, and the Easter cycle. These cycles are distinctively Christian and set Christianity apart from most other religions (although closely related, of course, to Judaism).

The Hebrew Cycle localizes our story within the context of the Old Testament - a story where God favors the little guy and a process of becoming.

The Old Testament cycle begins with creation and ends with a renovation of the world into a commonwealth of shalom, a place of justice and peace. This is a very large promise for which the promised land of Canaan is mere foreshadowing, a sort of down payment. ... This means that one way to see the mystery of space-time is to view it as an unfinished epic, a work in progress. It can be seen as a process in which the new, the surprising, and the unexpected constantly emerge. It means we live in a world whose potential is yet to be fulfilled. (p. 41)

...This view of the world as a creative process, ..., explains why hope is such an important component of the way of life it shapes. Hope is that virtue that sees the past and the present in light of a future horizon. (p. 42)

The Christmas Cycle brings the focus of this hope into the life purpose of one man. Jesus teaching was focused around

...God's promise of a new day, an age of peace and goodwill, the "Reigning of God" which he said was already coming to pass in a preliminary way. (p. 42)

Cox notes that the new regime, the Kingdom of God - or more precisely the Reigning of God, (because it is a happening not a place) - is a regime change and thus possessed anti-imperial and anti-Rome undercurrents.   But it is much more than this.

The Biblical ideal of the Kingdom of God also includes an essential inward element. ... It also includes that death, either of the planet or of an individual, is not their ultimate destiny, and it points to a cosmic fulfillment that transcends human history, encompassing the celestial bodies. This in no way undercuts the fact that the Kingdom of God, as envisioned by Jesus and the prophets, contains an undeniable utopian element, (p. 44)

According to Cox Jesus wrestled constantly with the tests of faith - not doubts, but the struggles and setbacks which seem to defeat the coming of the Kingdom.

The Easter Cycle considers the death - and more importantly the resurrection of Jesus.  In this Cox notes that the while the disciples fled with the crucifixion but then

"something happened to convince them that Jesus and the coming peaceable kingdom he embodied had not been defeated by death. The disciples came to believe that, in some sense that is hard to define, he still lived." (p. 51) 

Cox focuses on the resurrection as critical - but not, it seems, literal.

The truth of the Easter cycle is that the life work of Jesus was not annihilated by his execution. It continues, among both those who follow him explicitly and those who contribute to the realization of the "possible world" that he demonstrated, whether they acknowledge him or not. (p. 53)

And putting this in context of The Age of Faith (the first of Cox's three ages)

The faith of the earliest Christians combined that of the Old Testament with the Christmas story, the other accounts of Jesus's life, and the Passion and Easter stories. Their faith took the form of loyalty to Jesus rather than to Caesar and a hope that the new world of shalom Jesus personified would one day appear in its fullness. (p. 53)

These three cycles tell the story of the Christian faith according to Cox. This is the story that makes sense of the mystery of the world. There are elements with which I agree (much of his Hebrew and Christmas cycles) and some with which I do not (the significance of the Easter cycle). But rather than criticize the picture that Cox paints, I would rather focus our discussion in a different direction - and this brings us full cycle back to the questions I posed above, and phrase a bit differently here.

What would you change - how would you paint the picture of the Christian story? If this was the age of faith - what was the central focus of the faith of the earliest Christians?

Why is Christianity not simply another way (one among many) of dealing with the mysteries of life, purpose, and mortality?

If you wish to contact me, you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net

A genuine Third Way will get beyond the Sunday morning sermon as the primary form of spiritual formation and education in a local church, and neither Belcher nor Pagitt seem to approach preaching through the lens of a larger formational program with clearly defined outcomes. A genuine Third Way will form a well-rounded and adaptable formation program that guides all sermons, all teaching, and all activities in the church. Sermons will be seen as one part of the formational ministry of the church. In other words, Third Way preaching is rooted in the overall outcomes of the church.

The focus shifts from what the pastor-teacher knows and what the pastor-teacher says and how the pastor-teacher performs and that the pastor-teacher informs the congregation to each person in the congregation being a learner whom the pastor is equipping for learning and living.

1. The one who knows, and sometimes perceived as the only one who knows.

2. The one who informs.

3. The one who thinks that teaching/informing on Sundays especially is magically absorbed (completely, or mostly completely) simply by listening to the pastor-teacher.

1. Equip congregants to be learners and students; to be folks who also know.

2. Exhorts congregants to become better learners and students so they can acquire information themselves.

3. Educates congregants to live what is being learned by providing opportunities -- or illustrations -- for the congregant to "apply" or "discern" how to live out the information in this world. Instead of thinking what is said magically goes into other heads, the pastor-teacher "enables" congregants to work out the information into real life.

Exodus 20:8 "Remember the Sabbath day to set it apart as holy. 20:9 For six days you may labor and do all your work, 20:10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; on it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, or your male servant, or your female servant, or your cattle, or the resident foreigner who is in your gates. 20:11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that is in them, and he rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and set it apart as holy.

Deuteronomy 5:12 Be careful to observe the Sabbath day just as the Lord your God has commanded you. 5:13 You are to work and do all your tasks in six days, 5:14 but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. On that day you must not do any work, you, your son, your daughter, your male slave, your female slave, your ox, your donkey, any other animal, or the foreigner who lives with you, so that your male and female slaves, like yourself, may have rest. 5:15 Recall that you were slaves in the land of Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out of there by strength and power. That is why the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day.

Matthew 12:1 At that time Jesus went through the grain fields on a Sabbath. His disciples were hungry, and they began to pick heads of wheat and eat them. 12:2 But when the Pharisees saw this they said to him, "Look, your disciples are doing what is against the law to do on the Sabbath." 12:3 He said to them, "Haven't you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry - 12:4 how he entered the house of God and they ate the sacred bread, which was against the law for him or his companions to eat, but only for the priests? 12:5 Or have you not read in the law that the priests in the temple desecrate the Sabbath and yet are not guilty? 12:6 I tell you that something greater than the temple is here. 12:7 If you had known what this means: 'I want mercy and not sacrifice,' you would not have condemned the innocent. 12:8 For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath."

12:9 Then Jesus left that place and entered their synagogue. 12:10 A man was there who had a withered hand. And they asked Jesus, "Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?" so that they could accuse him. 12:11 He said to them, "Would not any one of you, if he had one sheep that fell into a pit on the Sabbath, take hold of it and lift it out? 12:12 How much more valuable is a person than a sheep! So it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath." 12:13 Then he said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." He stretched it out and it was restored, as healthy as the other. 12:14 But the Pharisees went out and plotted against him, as to how they could assassinate him.

14:21 After they had proclaimed the good news in that city and made many disciples, they returned to Lystra, to Iconium, and to Antioch. 14:22 They strengthened the souls of the disciples and encouraged them to continue in the faith, saying, "We must enter the kingdom of God through many persecutions." 14:23 When they had appointed elders for them in the various churches, with prayer and fasting they entrusted them to the protection of the Lord in whom they had believed. 14:24 Then they passed through Pisidia and came into Pamphylia, 14:25 and when they had spoken the word in Perga, they went down to Attalia. 14:26 From there they sailed back to Antioch, where they had been commended to the grace of God for the work they had now completed. 14:27 When they arrived and gathered the church together, they reported all the things God had done with them, and that he had opened a door of faith for the Gentiles. 14:28 So they spent considerable time with the disciples.

At a rudimentary level, Peter Berger's definition works as well as any: "Production for a market by enterprising individuals or combines with the purpose of making a profit." (The Capitalist Revolution, 19) I think most economists would agree that capitalism includes at least the following:

Specialization of Labor - Specialization is heightened.  Labor is oriented toward earning wages as contributors toward the creation of products versus laborers individually creating products for sale.

Market Exchange - Exchange has long been with us but it pervades capitalism. People once produced most of what they consumed and traded as a supplement. Now we acquire what we consume and supplement it with production our own goods. Prices for goods are set by supply and demand.

Private Property - The means of production are privately owned and managed by private individuals and firms based on long-term risk and reward.

Emphasis on Capital - Historically, land and labor were the primary means of production. Capital is the dominant means in capitalism. Capital is wealth placed in productive service. A firm's physical plant and equipment are typical examples but it can take other forms as well.

The emergence of capital as a major factor began at least by Fifteenth Century in Europe with ocean bound trade expeditions. These undertakings were risky and expensive. The Dutch and the English developed forerunners of modern corporations allowing people to pool money and share risk. The big transition came with the advent of steam and combustion engines in the late Eighteenth Century. These new power sources enabled construction of unprecedentedly large manufacturing facilities requiring, by historical standards, astronomically large amounts of private wealth to be placed in productive service. The construction of the Erie Canal, begun in 1817, was probably one of the first private ventures in the United States requiring significant capital, but railroads and manufacturing quickly followed suit.

No economy exists in a vacuum relative to other cultural values. While the American economic system is clearly capitalist, it is a mistake to equate capitalism with the American economy. Other cultures have adopted capitalist models but have differing concepts of justice. That influences how they evaluate the efficacy of capitalism and what adjustments should be made to the economic rules of the game.

Critics of capitalism often speak of the dangers of "unbridled" capitalism. While it is possible to have insufficient regulation it is not possible to have unbridled capitalism. That would be anarchy. At least some minimal level of regulation is required if for no other reason than to protect property rights, enforce contracts, and adjudicate disagreements. The question is what degree and kinds of regulation should exist beyond this minimalist level.

Economist Paul Heyne used to use a traffic analogy to highlight important dynamics of economies. He invited us to ask if an economy is more like air traffic controllers managing flights in and out of an airport or is it more like an urban traffic network.

"... Air traffic controllers can reasonably be said to manage the movement of commercial airline traffic: they impose upon all the pilots flying commercial places a central plan that dictates precisely for each one the time of take-off, the speed and path of ascent, the route to be followed, and the time, speed, and path of descent and landing. But no one manages the flow of vehicular traffic on the streets of a modern city in this way. Drivers choose their own times of departure, routes to follow, speed of travel, maneuvers along the way, and final destination, reporting their plans to no one and continually revising these plans as they see fit. Drivers are not completely free to do anything they please, of course. They are constrained by the decisions of other drivers in the vicinity. There are also "rules of the game," some of them very specific but others quite vague, that limit choices drivers may make. Within these rules, however, and sometimes a bit outside them, drivers pursuing their own interests with very little concern for the interests of others (largely because of extremely limited knowledge of those interests) coordinate their interactions and arrive safely and expeditiously at their destinations.

No one manages this process in the sense of controlling outcomes. Traffic engineers can influence the process by changing the timing of lights, altering speed limits, or adjusting parking regulations, and over time they can increase their influence through street construction and closure. But they can neither predict nor control the specific results. The most they can aim for is smooth and rapid flow. An air traffic controller is an oikonomos. There is no oikonomos in the world of urban traffic, neither on the streets nor in the control centers of traffic engineers, and anyone who aspired to become an oikonomos of urban traffic world would have failed to understand the complexity of the problem."  ("Are Christians Called to be "Stewards of Creation?", Stewardship Journal, Win. 1993, 19)

Metaphorically, pure capitalism is the urban traffic network while pure socialism is the air traffic control model. (The distributivist "make everything local" model would be, I suppose, the no transportation model.) In reality, all economies are some mixture. Other challenges enter the mix that are not captured by this metaphor.

For example, capitalism tends to create large corporations. They are needed for their productive capacities in some industries but their size presents the opportunity for a variety of abuses. That requires a strong government to check abuse. Yet, strong government tends to invite corporate powers to work the political system in their favor precisely because it is so powerful.

Cultural value systems also come into play. For instance, relative to the United States, most European nations have flatter income distributions due to redistributive policies, but also less mobility up and down the economic ladder. The United States has a wider income distribution but greater mobility up and down the economic ladder. Europe has tended to value stability while the United States has tended to value dynamism. Which is better? There are trade-offs either way. The bottom line is that there is no universal model of capitalism we can point to in application because many of the specifics are worked in decisions about trade-offs based on cultural values.

The challenge for theological reflection on economics systems is that the term "capitalism" carries considerably more baggage for some than I have described in this post. Capitalism for some names an ethos of greed, selfishness, consumerism and waste (none of which are essential to capitalism but are values fed into the system.) Therefore, they recoil when economists and others speak affirmatively about "capitalism." Similarly economists view visceral objections to capitalism (meaning to them, division of labor, market exchange, private property, and capital) as ideological close mindedness. I continue to be amazed at the number of books and articles I read that bring capitalism into a discussion without defining it.

Capitalism is often characterized as an ogre that oppresses people with consumerism. More accurately the challenge of capitalism is not oppression but seduction. Some say that the core sin of capitalist societies is greed, but along with Jay Richards I think it is gluttony. We don't know how to control our appetites.

Another challenge leveled at capitalism is that it is based on survival of the fittest. It promotes individualism. Division of labor and trade disconnects us from the final product and from the natural resources used in production. Yet another feature of evolution is that of emerging complexity and cooperation in organisms. Cells cease to be single cell creatures and emerge into multiple cell creatures with individual cells becoming ever more specialized. It can be argued that division of labor and markets help integrate humans (cells) into a more evolved highly cooperative creature.

I've gone long (again). It is impossible to capture all the nuances I want to in one post but hopefully there is enough here to generate some discussion. 

The Acts of the Apostles (Abingdon New Testament Commentaries)

14:8 In Lystra sat a man who could not use his feet, lame from birth, who had never walked. 14:9 This man was listening to Paul as he was speaking. When Paul stared intently at him and saw he had faith to be healed, 14:10 he said with a loud voice, "Stand upright on your feet." And the man leaped up and began walking. 14:11 So when the crowds saw what Paul had done, they shouted in the Lycaonian language, "The gods have come down to us in human form!" 14:12 They began to call Barnabas Zeus and Paul Hermes, because he was the chief speaker. 14:13 The priest of the temple of Zeus, located just outside the city, brought bulls and garlands to the city gates; he and the crowds wanted to offer sacrifices to them. 14:14 But when the apostles Barnabas and Paul heard about it, they tore their clothes and rushed out into the crowd, shouting, 14:15 "Men, why are you doing these things? We too are men, with human natures just like you! We are proclaiming the good news to you, so that you should turn from these worthless things to the living God, who made the heaven, the earth, the sea, and everything that is in them. 14:16 In past generations he allowed all the nations to go their own ways, 14:17yet he did not leave himself without a witness by doing good, by giving you rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying you with food and your hearts with joy." 14:18Even by saying these things, they scarcely persuaded the crowds not to offer sacrifice to them.

14:19 But Jews came from Antioch and Iconium, and after winning the crowds over, they stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, presuming him to be dead. 14:20 But after the disciples had surrounded him, he got up and went back into the city. On the next day he left with Barnabas for Derbe.

Today I begin a series of posts looking at Harvey Cox's new book The Future of Faith. We'll see how long it goes - at least a couple of weeks. Cox is the Hollis Professor of Divinity emeritus at Harvard and is best known for his 1965 book The Secular City.  I first became familiar with Cox and his work through his book When Jesus Came to Harvard: Making Moral Choices Today, a very thoughtful and thought provoking book.  The new book explores the trends that Cox sees in the history of the church and his thoughts on the future of faith, including Christian faith.

In the first chapter of his book Cox describes a history of the church divided into three ages, the age of faith, the age of belief, and the age of the spirit (we will look at these in greater detail below). He then talks about his personal faith journey from a rather fundamentalist Baptist to the current day. He talks about his experiences at Penn as an undergraduate where his belief - but not his faith - was shaken.  To understand this statement it is important to understand what Cox means by faith as he now uses the term. 

As Cox describes it faith is the experience of the divine - not a set of theories about the divine, and Christianity is best understood as a way of life, not as a creed or set of proper beliefs. He notes that the confusion began to clear in his mind when an acquaintance described himself as "a practicing Christian, but not always a believing one"; when a bishop of the Catholic church welcomed an audience saying "The line between belief and unbelief ... runs through the middle of each one of us, including myself, a bishop of the church"; and as he pondered the doubts experienced by Mother Teresa. (p. 16-17) 

Does Cox's idea that faith is experience and way of life hit a resonance? Is it possible to be a practicing Christian, but not always a believing one?

Now a little more detail. In his book Cox divides church history into the following three eras:

The Age of Faith - comprising the first three centuries. In this age Cox suggests that the church was more concerned with following Jesus than with enforcing what to believe about Jesus. This is a summary that strikes me as rather broad brush as I do think that there was also concern about what to believe.

The Age of Belief - the next 1500 or more years of the church.  A time when power and creed and hierarchy became the rule.  Faith about Jesus becomes more important than faith in Jesus. Cox notes:

The year 385 CE marked a particularly grim turning point. A synod of bishops condemned a man named Priscillan of Avila, and by the order of the emperor Maximus he and six of his followers were beheaded in Treves.... He was the first Christian to be executed by fellow Christians for his religious views. (6-7)

The church, in a fashion, moved from persecuted to persecutor. But Cox doesn't do full justice to the history. This isn't an abrupt change, and it is a change that began while the church was persecuted. With the power of state it became possible.  It would also be a mistake to think that the church was united in favor of the execution - it was not, although Cox fails to mention this in his summary. (See Priscillian on wikipedia - if someone has a better link - let me know)

The Age the Spirit - A trend where Christians now are defining faith by action rather than creed, where spirituality is more important than dogma. What is spirituality as Cox uses the term?

It reflects a widespread discontent with the preshrinking of religion, Christianity in particular, into a package of theological propositions by religious corporations that box and distribute such packages. (13)

...it represents an attempt to voice awe and wonder before the intricacy of nature that many feel is essential to human life without stuffing them into ready-to-wear ecclesiastical patterns. (13-14)

...it recognizes the increasingly porous boundaries between different traditions and, like the early Christian movement, it looks more to the future than to the past. (14)

A change is underway and the church will never be the same. Cox sees this as the next big change in Christianity, an irreversible and unavoidable process ... the age of the Spirit, the decline of hierarchy, the distancing from creedal belief, the importance of practice, the significance of faith as a way of life. 

I must admit I find Cox's summary a little too much of a broad brush.  While the trends ring true it seems to me that there is a thread in the faith throughout the centuries that is true to following Christ as a way of life and founded in central beliefs about Christ.  The essence of the creeds did not spring from thin air in the third century, nor did the practice of faith disappear for 15 centuries.

What do you think? Does this outline of church history make sense? Could we be entering an age of faith - but not belief, an age of the spirit?

If you wish to contact me, you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net