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Patterns Of Christian Social Action
By James M. Gustafson

The form of Christian action is governed by the social structure within which action takes place. There is a limited number of socially given patterns through which members of the Christian community can exert influence and act in any given society. The form of action is also governed by the existence of the person in Christian faith. There are qualities of life which are consequent upon belief in God, faith in God, that affect the action of the Christian. These are never fully specifiable, but faith affects the style and stance of the moral actor, and in turn the form of his action. The form of action is also understood to have some relation to God's action, to the divine initiative, and to the divine ordering of life. Christians presume that life exists within a framework created, if not redeemed by God, and that action in the realm of the social is not unrelated to the power and order of God.

Dispute among Christians is far greater on the second two points of reference, that is, the meaning of our faith for our action and the meaning of God's existence and action for our action, than on the first-the more empirically verifiable given pattern. Let us examine the greater detail these three: the form of action as governed by the social structure; the form of action as governed by personal faith; and the form of action as governed by God's objective action.

I

Christian action takes place within a social sphere. It is action through patterns of human relationships which are relatively set by the contemporary social structure. Any effect upon the order of society comes about through engagement with that order itself. Christians cannot create de novo the optimum conditions for the exertion of influence or the determination of a course of events. Thus while we seek to become self-conscious about the possible patterns of action, and seek to find ways in which our social witness

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can become more effective, our plans are generally limited to an exercise of present available structures. There are four that seem to me important for Christian action in the age of technology.

First, Christians are members of more than one socially defined community. We are always members of the Christian community and other communities; we are never exclusively members of the Christian community. We are, in a descriptive sense, engaged in social action as Christians in the various communities to which we belong. We act within the more intimate relationships of family and friendship groups. But we are also participants in political parties, management of the mass communications, labor unions, and other groups. In a sense the bridge between the Church and other social organizations is already built. It is true that not all important persons in the powerful organizations are serious about their Church loyalty, and indeed they may have no Christian loyalty at all. It may also be true that not many persons with strong loyalty to Jesus Christ are in important positions in our society. But there are more persons who join these communities in their own lives than the Churches have learned to work with effectively.

The bridge for Christian action does not exist simply by virtue of multiple memberships, one of which is in the Church. Membership can be a very external relationship. But one assumes that there is an integrity to the personal existence of most people in which their various loyalties are drawn together and through which loyalties have an impact upon each other. The purposes to which one is committed in one community must find some satisfactory relationship to the purposes to which one is committed in another community. The various centers of loyalty find their own ordering in the character of personal existence. This integration of personal existence is one way in which the Christian community can affect other communities.

Pastors and analysts of contemporary Christianity are prone to understand this, though they see more clearly the ways in which loyalties to the values and purposes of American big business or American suburban culture creep into the life of the Church, than they do the possibility of the same process being a means of Christian action in the world. We are perplexed when Church boards of trustees incorporate either the sales ethos or the balance-the-budget ethos of American business culture in the life of the Church. We

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dislike having Church decisions, which normatively ought to be made in the light of Christ's lordship, being made in the light of the lordship of the budget or of effective fund raising methods. We recognize the integration of the personal existence of these laymen, but deplore that its center is not Jesus Christ.

The fact that this integration exists to some extent marks a possibility for more self-conscious Christian action. There is much evidence that what men believe about God seems to have little implication for their responsibilities in society. Such evidence cautions us against assuming that the transformation of the technical society will take place automatically by enlarging our Church memberships, or even by holding religious revival meetings of one sort and another. But the task of the Church, with reference to Christian action, becomes clearer. We must help the laymen who are in the Church and in positions of social responsibility to interpret their responsibility in the light of the Gospel. The meanings, values, and purposes which appear to be the center of their personal integrity must be brought under the scrutiny of the Gospel. Their responsibilities in society must be interpreted in the light of the possibilities and limitations of man as these are understood in our Christian heritage. The Church must aid them in seeing moral dimensions in their concrete areas of social power, out of which they can exercise more responsible action. The task of the Church is not to tell them what they ought to do in specificity, but to enable them to see possibilities of moral value, and pitfalls of temptation in what they are doing and what they can do. The Church cannot claim that moral certainty is forthcoming from centering the layman's personal existence in Jesus Christ; it can claim that there are implications for all human action that come from one's faith. The Christian community can help its members understand what some of these implications are, and thus have some impact upon their action in the social structure.

In this respect, we can see the importance of the doctrine of Christian vocation. It needs to be somewhat redefined in relation to current popular usage. Many more romantic interpreters of this doctrine understand it in terms of the possibilities of self-realization that come in one's work. They seek to find ways of making one's work "meaningful," and in effect exhilarating. While this is a worthy aim, and not to be denied, it does not exhaust the

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potential of understanding our place of responsibility as a place of Christian action. The place of one's action is a place in which one can responsibly exercise social power out of gratitude and obedience to God. Christians have positions of social responsibility. The social structure involves us in social power. We need to understand the possibilities of this, to take seriously in the Church the moral seriousness of many of our laymen, and to find ways of more effective action through the common participation in Christian and other communities.

A second means of action governed by the social structure is the exercise of power through socially disciplined blocs or groups. We have come to use the words "countervailing power" since Professor Galbraith renamed an old idea: that is, the domination of a particular power group in the society must be met by the emergence of a group which checks and balances the power of the first group. Or in the manner of Professor David Truman, we might understand the social process as competition among groups primarily dedicated to their self-interest, and hope that out of this competitive process will come a safe pattern of social balance. But social action through the disciplined exercise of economic or political power is virtually impossible for the Church.

The difficulty is particularly clear in the case of Protestantism, for American Protestantism is radically democratized. The laity believe that the Church has no right to speak apart from the consensus of its members; that moral authority for the Church resides in its general will. If an issue arises around which there is lay consensus, Protestants have demonstrated remarkable political realism. The story of the Anti-Saloon League as the pressure organization for dominantly Protestant interests is a case in point. But issues are few and far between around which such fervent unity can be evoked, and such issues are almost predestined to be oversimplifications of a much more complex moral problem. The clearest issue in our society is desegregation. Boycotts and sit-ins have proved effective but the numbers of participants remains small. If Protestantism is to see that social discipline is necessary for the exercise of social power, its will to action may be paralyzed by this vision. But the Churches do not need to become social power blocs in order to affect social power blocs.

Protestants and others can agree on certain relative social values

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to be achieved. The interests of a morally healthier society can be met in one decade by encouraging the growth of industrial unions; in another it can be met by encouraging legislation to make unions more responsible. Protestant members of unions, political parties, producers' associations, and other organizations can exercise influence in the course that these power groups take. We can learn from Roman Catholic programs in this regard. The Catholic labor schools and organizations such as American Catholic Trade Unionists have had an impact on the whole for the social well-being of the nation, without much aggrandizement of benefits for the Church itself. We need not encourage Protestant blocs within pressure groups, though tactically such may be necessary on some occasions. But we can encourage responsible participation in voluntary organizations and pressure groups. The groups exist; they function in our social structure. They will exercise social power with or without any self-conscious Christian participation in them. Our membership in such groups is a possible means of action on our part as Christians.

More limited in its immediate effects on the exercise of social power is the representational witness of Christians as Christians on particular issues. Even a technological society such as ours still pays some attention to the statements of a religious community, based upon the reflection of the best minds of that community. We have not become so totally secularized that testimony on crucial issues-as Christians-is completely ineffective. City governments pay some attention to the reflections and judgments of the Christian clergy, not out of respect for the votes the clergy controls, but out of at least a residual respect for the Christian ethos. Industrialists have been known to invite criticism from Christian thinkers out of deference to the moral perspective that they represent. The members of the World Order Conference in Cleveland were under no illusion that their statement on Red China would immediately change the course of foreign policy. But the statement was a courageous one, and at least informed the policy makers that there were moral grounds for a policy at variance with the one now exercised.

Many factors go into the effectiveness of the representational witness of the Church. They differ from time to time and place to place. Our growing realism about social power has led the Church to place less significance in this method of social action. Students

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are not passing many resolutions. Local clergy associations are more adept at influencing public matters through quiet work than they once were. But the testimony of Christian conscience need not be blocked by a recognition of its limitations in the exercise of power. Indeed, testimony of Christian conscience that is coupled with a sustained involvement in the patterns that effect public welfare can carry an important measure of weight in the processes of social action. The courage to commit oneself to print about a matter of public dispute is not to be ignored. Intelligent and informed testimony from the Christian community is not totally ineffective by any means. Like other communities, this one can and ought to speak for its convictions.

Finally, we are involved in the shifting general moral climate of our society. While it is hard to locate the moral consensus of our society, we all seem to feel that it exists. Sometimes it is called the collective consciousness, sometimes the spirit of the times, sometimes by other names. But whatever it is called. we seem to understand that the moral climate of the United States is different now than it was in the latter part of the nineteenth century. We can be even more specific. Four years ago the student generation seemed to be "beat," to be without cause and commitment, to be "other directed." Now students are participating in sit-ins and Peace Corps programs; we have a new student climate. Statistical verification of such impressions is virtually impossible, but we are nonetheless convinced that they are largely true. Further we are convinced that moral concern affects behavior; that the social fabric of our society in part depends upon the general moral climate is something on which conservatives and liberals all agree.

Christians cannot afford to lose sight of the importance of this nebulous but powerful force. Other groups in our society are deliberately engaged in an effort to affect the moral climate. The famous Dr. Dichter was once reported to suggest that the growth of the economy depended in part upon the change in the moral approval given to thrift and self-denial. The redefinition of what man needs to be comfortably human is going on all the time. The mood of isolationism is fostered by groups dedicated to isolationist principles; the mood of fear of government growth is fostered by those dedicated to libertarian principles. Again, our realism about social power has sometimes led to fixing our attention upon the

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clearly defined centers of social power, and ignoring the significance of the moral climate. This climate may set certain limits beyond which the society will not allow policy to go. It may affect the specific goals and policies of private and public agencies and institutions. To be engaged in affecting the moral consensus is a given possibility.

In describing the forms of action that are governed by the social structure, we have not said anything that is very distinctively Christian. Christians simply ought to note what are the socially effective ways in which all persons act, and through which all communities of loyalty affect the structure of society and its processes. There is nothing so unique about Christian action that it can bypass these given patterns of life.

II

Christian action always involves the fact of the existence of God. The sphere of reality for Christian action includes the reality of God. This was well put by Dietrich Bonhoeffer: "The reality of God discloses itself only by setting me entirely in the reality of the world; but there I find the reality of the world already, always sustained, accepted, and reconciled in the reality of God" (Ethics, p. 61; Charles West's translation in his book, Communism and the Theologians, p. 334). The reality of God has a twofold significance for Christian action: (1) the personal life of the Christian actor as he lives in faith, and (2) the order of the world in which Christians live and act. More can be said concretely about the importance of the personal existence of Christian actors in the light of the reality of God, than can be said about the implications for the objective order of society.

The form of Christian action is governed by the Christian's faith in God, who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ. The precise act of the Christian does not find its pattern out of faith alone, but action is informed by faith. Some of the common consequences of life in faith can be drawn. These consequences, though inward in character, affect our basic stance in relation to our society.

Christian action is action in hope. It partakes of a "cosmic optimism," not in the sense that the expectations of an historical society of righteousness are to be realized, but in the knowledge that finally the destiny, context, and end of Christian action is in the hands

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of God. Frustration and bafflement by the complexities of a social order or process of social change are not overwhelming. Christian action rests in a certainty of goal which will be realized. It is grounded in a reality that orders social change, and finally will redeem it. Hope is generated in the belief that God's power limits the morally adverse consequences of human action; indeed that within the divine providence the actions of men can be brought into an order that finally fulfills the divine purpose. Christians face the future without despair, for the openness of the future in God's future. We can "strain forward to what lies ahead," with an ultimate assurance in the victory of the power of resurrection. Social processes that seem erratic and contingent in our sight are not outside the power of God's created and redeeming order. Hope makes us affirmative; we acknowledge possibility as well as limitation, capacity for new order in life as well as conviction about corrupt order. Hope is one of the fruits of God's spirit that informs the action of Christians.

Christian action is action in freedom. The freedom of Christian action is not only the freedom of all action, that is the possibility of innovating a course of events in the total social process. It is an inward freedom from self-concern and fear, from bondage to legalistic requirements and to the precise expectations of others as the basis of our salvation and self-esteem. Christian action in inward freedom is action out of trust in the goodness and mercy of God. It is action out of gratitude for the gift of God's mercy and goodness. It is the possibility freely to give oneself in action-to give oneself in obedience to God and to the social needs around us.

The consequences of Christian freedom for Christian action are several. We can be free to accept the world in all of its relativities. Responsible action can take place within the immediate sphere of responsibility, for we know that we are not finally to be judged by the perfection or imperfection of the course of events consequent upon our action. We can be objective about the relative claims of groups within our society, for we are not finally bound to an ideology about the supremacy of one group over another. Freedom gives us "distance" from our social responsibilities out of which comes better perspective on what is possible and what is necessary. Yet freedom enables us to be engaged without the expectation of perfection. It is a condition for courage, for taking moral risks.

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In Christian freedom we can be realistic about the means of responsible action. We are not ashamed to use the forms of action governed by the given social structure simply because they are not the creation of Christians out of love.

The freedom of the Christian moves him into the specific realm of action. His trust in God compels him to be identified with others, to become morally serious about his actions. Freedom enables the Christian to have a proper self-estimation; to expect not too much, to be open to new life and new possibilities.

Christian action is action in humility. The humility of Christian action is not abject annihilation of the possibility of responsible action. Rather it is humility that comes from the acknowledgment of God's prior power, prior order, and prior gift, out of which action comes. It is humility which recognizes that God can use a broken reed, in spite of its brokenness. Humility is a function of thankfulness: thankfulness that God has called man to places in which he can exercise his holy freedom in care for men. Humility is also a function of self-understanding: an understanding that accepts the limitations of the self in knowledge, in capacity for disinterestedness, in capacity for love and service. It is the humility that acknowledges the brokenness of the reed that God in his power uses. Humility makes no great claims for action; it requires neither honor nor reward. It colors Christian action.

Christian action is action in love. Love is an inward principle and order of Christian life. Love acknowledges the freedom of the other. Love ministers and does not rule; its authority lies in its power and not in its claim to power. Action in love avoids the imperial majesty of the ruler, the one who claims for his action some sacred authority. Love seeks the good in concrete ways within the realm of the possible. Love is both motivation and form in Christian action. It is an impulsive power which embraces the good of man and society with a measure of indiscrimination, without regard to status ascribed by the human order of values. Yet it is the form of discrimination, seeking the fitting action appropriate to the increment of goodness and order within the given possibilities.

Hope, freedom, humility, and love are all gifts, given in faith on the manward side and given in God's grace on the Godward side. They are the form of action that comes in the personal existence of the members of the Christian community. They are the fruits of

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trust, the inward form of Christian action. The outward pattern of this inward form is not absolutely determined by life in trust. The inner form finds appropriate outward expression in the context of given possibilities in the society. The form of existence in faith is one among several governing factors in Christian action. It is never to be taken for granted as habits upon which we can rely. The form of personal existence is a gift of the Holy Spirit of God; it is perhaps most reliable when it is least relied upon, when the believer acknowledges a divine agent of action who acts through man in Christ. It is what one can dimly discern and inadequately describe in the confession that "it is not I, but Christ living in me."

III

It is easier to define something of the personal implications of belief in God for our action than it is to determine an external order that God orders, or at least wills. We are hard put to say that a technological society is in accord with God's order at one point or another. We are hard put to say that it is out of God's order at any particular point. Yet Christians are pressed to affirm that there is power, purpose, and structure which is out there, which exists not only in the minds and hearts of men but has an objective existence. Christians are pressed to say that the requirements of social morality are governed not only by an inward form of life, but by an objective moral order.

But we are perennially plagued with what more can be said than the acknowledgment of an objective reality and order with its own thereness. The simple confession that a moral power, purpose, and structure exists gives us no knowledge that is of use in our moral actions. Even some of our favorite words sound empty when we seek to draw implications from them for our action. We can say that God is righteous, and that any human order ought to partake of the righteousness of God. But from righteousness to the use of time for purposes of public information on CBS television is a long way, and the path is not clear. Acknowledgment of the righteousness of God has an impact upon the form of our personal existence, but its significance for the proper external ordering of society is not so evident. Troeltsch understood this problem to be inherent in any Christian ethics that grounded itself in the Biblical witness alone, and believed that Christian ethics could become

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social ethics (in the sense of saying anything about the right order of society for a particular time and place) only by borrowing concepts from the natural law tradition.

Christians have defined the meaning of the objective moral order, as given by God, and presumably as an order in which God is acting in various ways. The great tradition of natural law has provided one basis for making judgments about what ought to be on the basis of what really, essentially, is the right order of society. For example, from Plato we have learned that justice is essentially a harmonious relationship among the interdependent orders of being. Within the self it is the harmonious relationship and right ordering of passions to intellect, for instance, according to their order of being. In society a pattern is historically required which participates in an order that essentially exists. Or we may use the notion of justice as referring to retribution for actions which disorder the society. Or it may mean a relatively equitable distribution of power and of things in order to preserve order. Whatever its meaning, it appears that justice is required not because some of us are inwardly disposed to be just, but because an order of life cannot continue without justice.

For some generations now, however, we have been acutely sensitive to the historically relative content that concepts like justice and equality have. We are prone to go in two directions from this sensitivity. Either we deny that they are useful concepts because they are so formal in character, or we find them to be operationally useful and do not ask what their grounding is in some created order of being. We may say that the idea of justice helps to preserve some order in history and society without identifying a particular just order with God's order or with God's presence in human action.

Some Christians have sought to use the idea of the Kingdom of God as a pattern for the order of society. We were "kingdom builders" until our theological and social sophistication removed this option from us. Now perhaps we want to say that signs of the appearing of the Kingdom ought to be manifest among us, or that there ought to be a foretaste of the Kingdom. But we still have a rather formal principle on our hands. Walter Rauschenbush had more courage than some of us; he dared to risk a content definition of the Kingdom and its requirements. It was democratization. Democratization required greater equalization of power and of the benefits of a grow-

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ing economy. From the notion of democratization one could design specific goals, strategy, and tactics for social life. The objective rulership of God required a more democratic order in family, state, education, and economic life.

The New England Puritan Christians also gave some specification to the order of society. The sovereignty of God was to be exercised in Church and civil commonwealth. This meant more than pious acknowledgment of a higher law and higher authority, though it meant these. It meant taking the law of the Bible seriously, for the Bible was a reliable revelation not only of what God had done for man, but of what God required human society to be. Further they infused elements of the natural law tradition into their ordering of the civil commonwealth. Since our historical sophistication removes the possibility of literal truth in the Bible, and the application of this truth to a new age, the Bible appears to be of limited value in guiding our understanding of what God orders.

Christians in all times have believed that God is love, and that from this being of God there is an imperative to be loving. Thus we seek an order in which love is given maximum fulfillment. Love is the law of life in a double sense: in the sense of imperative to be obeyed, and in the sense of the ultimate reality or possibility inherent within human life. But we are always faced with the definition of operational implications from love which pertain more specifically to our time and place and the possibilities of achievements that reside there. Love as mutuality is more a possibility in society than love as self-sacrifice, though the former must always stand under the judgment of the latter. Or we derive principles with less authority than the universal law of love and with more potential for realization in the specific situation.

For other Christians what is required is a life of following after Jesus Christ. Some believe this means non-resistance to evil; some believe this means non-violent resistance to evil. The second group are more socially responsible with reference to achievable purposes than the former. For some this means conformation to an inner spirit of Jesus Christ, so that the witness is that of suffering humility, and finally death itself.

For still others, Christians cannot make significant calculations about the appropriate or inappropriate order on the basis of any moral knowledge. The life of Christian action becomes virtually

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an intuitive reaction to a particular situation in the sure knowledge that our action is good because God is good. Calculations and discriminations always involve sin; they are always for specific values which are not universal, for the good of a nation, or of a culture. This pattern of thinking seems to deny the importance of social values, the significance of an "ethic of cultural values."

In seeking to know how Christian action ought to be governed by the divine action and the divine order, we are in what is to me the most difficult problem in Christian action. We are in the perilous position of having to say something, but knowing that almost anything we say is either claiming too much, or is saying not enough. It is either claiming too much for our particular actions to say that they follow the pattern of God's objective action, or it is saying that we know so little about what God's ordering activity is that no moral knowledge comes from our knowledge of God. If we accept a call to Christian action in a technological or any other age, however, we must be discriminating, judicious, and informed. We need insight, principles for the interpretation of our actions, and the courage to risk stands on matters which are ultimately highly relative, but presently of great importance.

Perhaps the form of Christian personal existence, the inner form of our action, and the form of God's ordering activity meet in our concrete action. We can risk our relative judgments and actions, accept responsibility for the place in which we are called to act, because inwardly we know the grace and mercy of God which gives us hope, freedom, courage, humility, and love. We can act in the light of our best knowledge derived from various sources about what is objectively required because we affirm that the ultimate agent of all action, the Lord of all life, is revealed in Jesus Christ. The meaning of Jesus Christ is clearer with reference to the inner form of our action than the outer form of our action. Yet it is the same Lord, The God whom we can inwardly trust is the God who outwardly orders life. He calls us in a technological age to be responsible actors in a given structure and process of life.