Transitions

Hi everyone,

Summer is coming to a close, and we here at ESR are in transition. Like all educational institutions, we are welcoming a new cohort of students - both residential and Access - and gearing up for another year of classes, seminars and events.

This summer was a rich and productive one for us. We had the opportunity to visit Yearly Meetings all over the country and touch base with Friends from a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences. We were also able to host events here on the campus of Earlham School of Religion.

One event we were able to host this spring was the annual Willson Lectures. This year, our lecturer was Joerg Rieger. We invite you to enjoy the video series that we have produced from his lectures:

• 2011 Willson Lectures: Joerg Rieger -- Lecture One: "Empire and Economics: The Difference Christianity Makes"
• 2011 Willson Lectures: Joerg Rieger -- Lecture Two: "Empire and Resistance: Reshaping Desire from the Bottom Up"
• 2011 Willson Lectures: Joerg Rieger -- Lecture Three: "Christ and Empire: The Radical Christian Heritage"

Joerg Rieger, in the Flesh and on the Page

By Wayne Williams
It’s really quite revolutionary what he’s asking us to consider. Rieger’s book, Remember the Poor, develops the liberation theology of Gustavo Gutiérrez while holding hands with Jacques Lacan’s philosophy of the “other” and Frederick Herzog’s theologically impassioned social justice work in Latin America. To consider and elevate the poor by entering their world and giving them an authoritative voice requires us to reframe our privileged, empirical Christian worldview dramatically. Rieger’s Willson Lectures at ESR were grounded in his expert theological, Scriptural, philosophical, and ethical understanding of the problems contemporary Christians face to authentically carrying out Christ’s Gospel of good news for the poor. The problems are unequalled poverty in the face of capitalism’s ‘victory’, how to encounter the marginalized ‘other’, issues with questioning and relocating authority, and the need for the distribution of power. These manifold challenges can feel insurmountable to even a cock-eyed optimist like myself. Rieger was our theological tour guide into the Reality of the brokenness amidst our own Christian Empire. Aren’t we disgusted when the blinders come off? So when is the revolution?
The life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth was the revolution. Or has Jesus’ own Life and praxis been diminished by a converted empire’s insatiable need for power and authority? Unfortunately, Christ’s Gospel ministry to the impoverished, the diseased, and the sinners in His 1st century world has largely been subsumed by our Judeo-Roman-Christian Empire over the past two millennia. Empire has bigger priorities than care of the sick and suffering. The institutions of our inherited culture value authority, wealth, power, and dominion. What would Jesus say about all this?
Rieger’s message resonates at the crux of Christ’s Gospel and Empire. He debunks Empire’s blind economic doctrines, citing the ‘prosperity gospel’ as a prime example of religion intersecting economics with a blind faith in ‘the big ideas.’ Rieger asks if those who blindly accept religious doctrine are more likely to accept economic principles on blind faith as well.
The gap between rich and poor gets wider all the time. The disparity is unconscionable. Rieger argues that our Empire wants us to believe there is only one way to solve this problem. If God is always envisioned at the top, then we correlate that the privileged and powerful embody God’s character. Rieger invites us to look at those on the underside to understand what is really going on. What if God were at work not from the top but from the bottom of society? After all, none of the rights gained for women or minorities were given by a benevolent leader. They were hard fought from a grass roots movement.
Rieger argues for the common good. He cites Apostle Paul, “an injury to one is an injury to all,” as having solid bottom up logic. Rieger believes that the common good can be built from the bottom up. He articulates the challenges that this paradigm shift presents in a new vision of justice for the poor. There is enough to go around. The re/distribution of wealth, along with a re-evaluation of the role and value of labor and production are necessary. Rieger proposes the “good news for the poor” involves production, organization, and honoring creativity to the benefit of all. New economic models and alternatives are already at work.
Wayne is a current MDiv student at Earlham School of Religion. He is a member of Brooklyn Monthly Meeting, New York Yearly Meeting.

Rieger Without Romance - Reflections on the 2011 Willson Lectures

By Matt Hisrich
I would like to extend my appreciation to ESR for hosting the Willson Lectures, to David Johns for arranging Joerg Rieger’s visit, to Rieger himself for coming all the way to Richmond and presenting, and to Mandy Ford for working to make the lectures available for viewing online. I believe that Rieger’s goals are noble, and his analysis prompted me to give more significant thought to important questions than I would have otherwise. That’s a good outcome for the Willson Lectures, and I am confident that my experience is not unique.
Overall, my main response to Rieger’s lectures was of wanting more – a more robust critique of empire and economics, and more clear paths forward. After reading his book No Rising Tide in preparation for his visit, I couldn’t help but feel that the lack of clarity regarding the clear distinction between free markets and the interventionist chaos we are faced with today undermined both his analysis of economics as well as the validity of the conclusions he reached.  My hope as I arrived to listen to Rieger in person was that he would move beyond the limitations of that text.
Unfortunately, this hope was left unfulfilled. From the economic side, I stand by my initial critique of Rieger’s No Rising Tide as he offered little during the lectures to indicate that he does not in fact conflate free markets with a mercantilist system whereby “groups with political power use that power to secure government intervention to protect their interests while claiming to seek benefits for the nation as a whole.” This creates a significant problem in the solutions he presented at the Willson lectures – the political side of his analysis – grow out of this conflation.
As I read No Rising Tide, I was struck repeatedly both by the lack of clear steps toward the new reality Rieger envisions and by an all too uncritical approach toward public policy. He notes that “politicians are democratically elected by the people, while business leaders are not,” as if this puts an end to the discussion about corruption in government, and asks with genuine astonishment, “why would ‘government’ want to take just anything from its citizens, and who is ‘government’ in a democracy if not the citizens?”
These themes were again evident again in the lectures. Few concrete solutions were presented, and those that were raise more questions than real answers. He spoke several times about the importance of community gardens and labor unions, for instance, but it is difficult to see how these alone will begin to transform an empire and economic system that is so pervasive and domineering. His very limited comments on war and their connection to empire and economics should disturb any Friend. His assertion that when Jesus tells his disciples to tell John that the sick are healed and the blind can see is an affirmation of nationalized health care is an impressive leap. At one point during the Q&A period, he was asked how high unemployment should be addressed, and he suggested significant expansion of public sector jobs.
One must ask at this point why someone who speaks to “bottom up” power employs such “top-down” solutions through the state. The essential narrative that Rieger appears to operate out of is one in which the state is there to protect us from corporations. But while I would agree that the empire and economics as they exist today are pervasive and domineering forces in our lives, I wish that Rieger would expand the scope of his definition of empire to include democratic states that collude with business interests. 
His appreciation of democracy coupled with his disdain for corporations seems to prevent him from correctly identifying the crony capitalist nature of our economic system. This in turn prevents him from offering a response to empire-as-state that recognizes the incentives within the empire to expand the scope of its power whether employing the language or free markets or that of progressivism.  Sadly, therefore, the very remedies he suggests only serve to feed empire further.
In 1978, economist James Buchanan coined the phrase “politics without romance” to describe what he was trying to develop at the time – public choice theory. As Buchanan further elaborates, “Armed with nothing more than the rudimentary insights from public choice, persons could understand why, once established, bureaucracies tend to grow apparently without limit and without connection to initially promised functions. They could understand why pork-barrel politics dominated the attention of legislators; why there seems to be a direct relationship between the overall size of government and the investment in efforts to secure special concessions from government (rent seeking); why the tax system is described by the increasing number of special credits, exemptions, and loopholes; why balanced budgets are so hard to secure; and why strategically placed industries secure tariff protection.”
In order to build upon the work he has already undertaken, deepen his critique, and point readers toward solutions that begin to sever the ties between empire and economic interests, I would encourage Rieger to further explore public choice theory. As Buchanan argues, “Regardless of any ideological bias, exposure to public choice analysis necessarily brings a more critical attitude toward politicised nostrums to alleged socioeconomic problems.” If Rieger or others seek to strengthen their understanding of the connections between empire and economics, I would suggest Anthony de Jasay’s The State and Robert Higgs’s Crisis and Leviathan.
One of the definitions of theology is “faith seeking understanding.” During his lectures, Rieger issued a call for truly understanding the nature of the world around us so that we can be effective agents of change. Here’s where I would agree with him wholeheartedly. If at least part of our faith involves helping to bring about a more just and humane world, then there is no time to waste.
Matt Hisrich is the Ministerial Advocate for Indiana Yearly Meeting. He lives in Richmond, Indiana, with his wife and two daughters, and is a member of First Friends Meeting there. Matt is a graduate of Hillsdale College in Michigan and ESR, where he received his MDiv in teaching and theology. Prior to enrolling in seminary, he worked with non-profit public policy organizations in Indiana, Kansas, and Ohio.

Joerg Reiger: Challenging Empire

By Diane Reynolds
How can Christianity challenge Empire? Joerg Rieger, professor of theology at Southern Methodist University’s Perkins School of Theology in Dallas, author of several books, including Christ and Empire and No Rising Tide: Theology, Economics and the Future, asked that question when he came to ESR last week as the seminary’s Wilson lecturer.
Empire concentrates power and wealth in the hands of a few, Rieger said, and works to convince the people under its rule that it represents the only viable way to live. Military might supports and enforces this empire vision. The U.S. is an empire today, Reiger said, as the Roman Empire once was. In both cases, Christianity threatens to undermine Empire’s totalizing tendencies.
Empire has long tried to domesticate and dilute the Christian message, but has never been able to do so entirely. The alternative Christian vision flourishes at the bottom of society and works its way up. It can be found not in Empire promises of future benefits, but in the here and now—where the sick are healed, the blind see and the lame walk. It offers a shalom vision that challenges a top-down, all-powerful Empire.
Much of what Rieger said accords with Quakerism, which has traditionally spoken truth to power and aligned itself with the marginalized. Quakerism roots itself in an understanding of Christianity that opposes Empire’s hierarchy, oppression and material pomp.
Rieger explicitly linked Christianity to economics and politics. As I listened to him, I found myself agreeing - and wishing an alternative voice would debate him. Where do progressive notions go awry? Where can they be critiqued? In an era, unprecedented in my lifetime, in which the social contract appears to be in process of being fundamentally renegotiated, where do we find new ideas? When Reiger, for instance, was asked what could be done about “permanently disappeared” jobs, his answer was a government jobs program. However, in this political climate, the government doesn’t seem inclined to create jobs.  What do we do instead of looking to the government?
In a blog on the high tuition of a Quaker school in New York City, Bob Doto described a punk mentality, where, instead of fighting with the system, we find spaces where we can live with integrity. I’d love ESR to invite Rieger back, along with a punk theologian, and a conservative theologian, to debate each other and spark some perhaps heated conversation. After all, as the early Quakers knew, Jesus came not to support the status quo, be it progressive or conservative, but to light the world on fire.

Diane Reynolds is a student in Earlham School of Religion’s Master of Divinity program. She maintains a personal blog, Emerging Quaker.