The Church and Work: The Ecclesiological Grounding of Good Work

By Joshua Sweeden and Michael G. Cartwright

Work is one of the most dominant and unavoidable realities of life. Though experiences of work vary tremendously, many Christians share a common struggle of having to live in seemingly bifurcated spheres of work and faith. Beginning with the conviction that Christian faith permeates all aspects of life, Joshua Sweeden explores Christian understandings of "good work" in relationship to ethics, community practice, and ecclesial witness. In The Church and Work, Sweeden provides a substantial contribution to the theological conversation about work by proposing an ecclesiological grounding for good work. He argues that many of the prominent theological proposals for good work are too abstract from context and demonstrates how the church can be understood as generative for both the theology and practice of good work. This needed ecclesiological development takes seriously the role of context in the ongoing discernment of good work and specifically explores how ecclesial life and practice shape and inform good work. Christian understandings of good work are inconceivable without the church. Accordingly, the church is not simply the recipient and a dispenser of a theology of work, but the locus of its development.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Release date: Jan 31, 2014
• ISBN: 9781630873035

Joshua Sweeden

Joshua Sweeden is Assistant Professor of Theology/Richard B. Parker co-chair in Wesleyan Theology at George Fox Evangelical Seminary.

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The Church and Work

The Ecclesiological Grounding of Good Work

Joshua R. Sweeden

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The Church and Work

The Ecclesiological Grounding of Good Work

Copyright © 2014 Joshua R. Sweeden. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions. Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

New Revised Standard Version of the Holy Bible, copyright © 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Pickwick Publications

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

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Eugene, OR 97401

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ISBN 13: 978-1-55635-205-8

eISBN 13: 978-1-63087-303-5

Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Sweeden, Joshua R.

The church and work : the ecclesiological grounding of good work / Joshua R. Sweeden

xvi + 170 p. ; 23 cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 13: 978-1-55635-205-8

1. Work—Religious aspects—Christianity. 2. Church and the world. 3. I. Title.

BT378.5 S933 2014

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

This book is dedicated to my parents

who taught me good work in their love of neighbor

Foreword

Faculty and administrators in church related universities are no less likely than students to complain about having too much work to do and not enough time to do everything that they need to do. As a senior administrator at a church-related university, I do try to remind myself that I am privileged to do good work. In fact, when I am asked to offer prayers over meals at gatherings of faculty and staff, I frequently offer thanks to God for the gift of having good work to do. I suppose I do so because I know that not everyone has good work to do. I grew up in a working class background. I also have relatives who continue to struggle to find employment that make it possible for them to make a living wage. Deep in my bones, I know that good work is a privilege as well as a responsibility.

However, just because I am self-conscious about trying to be thankful about having the opportunity to do good work does not mean that my thinking about these matters is theologically coherent. Indeed, it pains me to realize that much of the time my thanksgiving is not grounded in Christian community, however much I might wish that it is not the case. Let me illustrate. I have also been known to encourage Christians to have candid conversations about matters of household economics—in both the familial and ecclesial sense of that phrase. I encourage United Methodists to look to John Wesley and their spiritual forebears as examples where solidarity between rich and poor actually existed in discernible ways—however limited and imperfect they may have been. I even go so far as to suggest that we talk with one another about how we deal with the financial resources that we earn, save, and spend. Typically, this makes Midwestern middle class church members uncomfortable, particularly when I suggest that this could still be a matter in which we would dare to give and receive counsel with one another.

On one memorable occasion, a United Methodist leader responded to my suggestion with sputtering his exasperation: "Well, thank God we don’t do that [anymore]." My response was to smile and ask him—and all of us present—what it is that we are thanking God for when we make such a response? Are we thankful that we United Methodists do not know enough about the financial details about one another’s lives to be able watch over one another in love as the people called Methodists did? Are we thankful that we no longer try to be accountable like our Wesleyan forebears once may have tried to be? Other questions might also be asked: Does that have anything to do with the fact that the lives of the rich and the poor do not intersect in most congregations?

I strongly suspect that many Christians—Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox alike are haunted by such discontinuities of faith and practice just as most of us feel alienated by our daily work and talk as if good work only exists in our nostalgic memories. That is why I think we are fortunate that we now have a theological resource that addresses this problematic state of affairs. This is a remarkable study by a Christian scholar who embraces the challenge of trying to ground Christian ethics in the ordinary practices of the church. I have read few scholarly monographs that are as cogent and well-argued as Josh Sweeden’s The Church and Work. That is a remarkable achievement when we take the measure of the difficulty of the conceptual challenges that he has set for himself in this remarkable book.

One way to illustrate the magnitude of Dr. Sweeden’s achievement is to remind ourselves of how compartmentalized our lives have become. According to one notable sociological study, one of the most defining features of urban life is the fact that churchgoers live and work in one area of a metropolitan community, but often worship in a totally different community.¹ This problem, of course, is by no means confined to the segregation of Sunday morning practices from the behaviors and practices that define the work-week. We are not merely dealing with the discrepancy between what happens on Saturday night and Sunday morning—as if our lapses are primarily defined by hypocrisy. Rather, the Christians of so-called first world cultures live within compartmentalized structures that choke our quest for community.

In sum: the search for community in the midst of our struggles around daily life and work is pathos-ridden. This also means that there are deep longings that afflict those who actually attempt to overcome the multiply-compartmentalized state of their lives. I call attention to this state of affairs not to bemoan our situation, but rather to define the backdrop against which Joshua Sweeden’s argument should be seen. I was particularly impressed with four features.

First: I want to call attention to the constructive significance of this volume. The ecclesiological and practical theological lens has been missing in the conversation about work. Josh Sweeden addresses that concern in a very powerful way.

Although I expected that Sweeden was likely to deploy John Howard Yoder’s categories, I did not anticipate that in the course of developing his own proposal for an ecclesial hermeneutic that Sweeden would extend John Howard Yoder’s own argumentation in such fruitful ways. Almost three decades ago, Yoder proposed that the hermeneutics of peoplehood could be explicated most clearly if four different agents could be identified in relation to Christian efforts to discern appropriate responses amid the church’s engagement with the world. Yoder contended that We need to ask not how ideas work but how community works.²

With that directive in view, Yoder identified four agents of communal hermeneutical process: Agents of memory, Agents of direction, Agents of linguistic self-consciousness, and Agents of order and due process. According to Yoder, these four features of the ways communities of faith work provided the context for moral reasoning, including but not limited to selective retrieval of the past (tradition) and improvisation in the present. Most Christian ethicists who have been influenced by Yoder’s body politics take the four agents as a sufficient list, but Sweeden does not stop there.

Sweeden rightly reminds us that there are potentially many unnamed agents, especially when considering a church’s particular context and ecclesial identity (88). He goes on to identify three additional features of the communal process of interpretation and discernment: agents of embodiment, agents of situation, and agents of ritual. Sweeden shows how these conceptual tools make it possible to ground his proposals for the ecclesiological grounding of work. He lifts up the life of Dorothy Day as an embodiment of the Catholic Worker movement that serves as a model of appropriated moral reasoning while challenging received assumptions. Sweeden also identifies a variety of examples of agents of situation ranging from the closing of a factory to unexpected environmental catastrophes.

While I strongly suspect that John Howard Yoder would have readily assented to the first two suggestions, I anticipate that the third agency or moral conversation will be the focus of further conversation, particularly given free church suspicion of liturgy. This is where I find Sweeden’s proposal to be richly suggestive. To focus on ritual opens up new conversations about continuities and discontinuities even as it enables Yoderian ethicists to re-engage questions about liturgy and ethics.

For the heirs of John Wesley, this could include re-engaging the practice of covenant renewal services, a rite of congregational rededication that includes prayers that commit the congregants understand their lives as defined by their relationship with the Covenant God: "I am no longer my own but thine. Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt. Put me to doing, put me to suffering, let me be employed for thee or laid aside for thee."³ This prayer, which is at once straightforward and poetic, not only offers a context for persons to offer thanksgiving for the privilege of having good work to do. It also provides conceptual resources for members of Christian congregations and intentional communities where struggles about work can be engaged by persons (rich and poor alike) who may find their work to be alienating. This is but one of the ways that I believe Joshua Sweeden’s extension of Yoder’s hermeneutics of peoplehood extends the conversation in ways that should prove generative for other proposals in theological ethics.

Second: I encourage readers to pay close attention to the patterns of resourceful selectivity in The Church and Work. Here also, Sweeden is following Yoder’s lead, but that is not all that is going on. John Wesley’s name is not mentioned very often, but make no mistake: this is a book that has been written in the Wesleyan spirit. Like John Wesley, Sweeden is trying to bring forth treasures old and new from the storehouse (Matt 13:52), in the most generous sense of that phrase. Like John Wesley, he could be said to be a scribe of the kingdom. As Sweeden points out, John Wesley was an eclectic theologian whose orientation to theology was not so much systematic as it was practical. That is to say, Wesley understood practical divinity as the kind of theological reflection that makes it possible for the people of God to participate in God’s mission in the world. For that reason, he also collected narrative testimonials about the lives of the contemporary saints. Sweeden’s study reminds us that it is not enough for us to pay attention to the narratives of Studs Terkel; we must learn to narrate the integrity of work grounded in congregational life.

Third: I commend Joshua Sweeden for re-initiating a conversation that is by no means limited to one Christian tradition. Indeed, part of what I find most encouraging about Sweeden’s work is that the way that he has engaged the writings of such diverse Christian theologians as St. Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, Karl Barth, Pope John Paul II, Dorothee Sölle, and Miroslav Volf invites further conversation. Here also, Sweeden’s re-engagement with the texts and arguments of the past is governed by his determination to ground good work in the world of congregations. I might add that these readings also meet another one of the criteria that John Howard Yoder lifted up in his seminal essay The Hermeneutics of Peoplehood. If we are going to recover the church’s missionary ethic of incarnation, we must learn to celebrate confessionally that light and truth have taken on the vulnerability of the particular.⁴

Fourth: As a senior administrator at a church-related university, I am concerned about the alienation that faculty and students often feel with respect to work. As one perceptive participant-observer has aptly noted, in the twenty-first century students and faculty on many college and university campuses increasingly have a shared experience.

The student who spends six years working forty hours a week and taking out loans to pay for college, only to discover little besides a string of part-time, low-paying jobs after graduation, if they graduate, has a lot in common with the majority of college teachers these days.

And both groups, despite what looks like privilege, now know what the average American worker has learned over the last couple of generations. In that common experience of economic injustice, lies the real potential for a transformation of higher education."⁵

I have a hunch that this circumstance may be another one of those agents of situation that Joshua Sweeden has suggested we need to take seriously as we ground our theology of work ecclesiologically. If we do, we may begin to see opportunities for incarnational mission and not simply daunting challenges.

For that reason, Christian leaders should be grateful that Joshua Sweeden has added his voice to the growing chorus of Christian scholars who have embraced theological exploration of vocation as critical to the mission of church-related higher education. Two decades ago, Mark Schwehn raised critical questions about the Weberian framework within which many faculty and administrators had come to think about the relationship of religion and the academic vocation.⁶ Schwehn and others have provided conceptual resources that have made it possible for a younger generation of scholars to rethink the tendency to regard their scholarship as work that must be divorced from religious convictions. In fact, conjunctive possibilities about the relationship of Work and Church are re-emerging as leaders in church-related higher education recognized that and thanks to the work of the 176 institutions in the Network for Vocation in Undergraduate Education, it is increasingly possible for students to aspire to lead lives that matter. This is another arena in which faculty and administrators ought to give thanks. God is giving us the opportunity to discern what it means to be ecclesial-based universities.⁷

That is why I say thank God for Josh Sweedens’ book. I hope that others will take up his challenge to join him in re-reading classic texts of the Christian faith and dare to ask ourselves new questions how the communities of church and work intersect. As we do so, I predict that we will discover other connections between Work and Church. And no one should be surprised if Joshua Sweeden makes additional contributions in this vital quest before his work is done. After all, he not only has shown us what it can mean to the church for Christians to do good work, but also what it means when we claim that privilege not so much for ourselves as for the sake of the mission of God in the world. That is yet another reason to thank God!

Michael Cartwright

1. Diamond, Souls of the City.

2. Yoder, The Priestly Kingdom,

28

.

3. A Covenant Prayer in the Wesleyan Tradition.

4. Yoder, The Priestly Kingdom,

44

.

5. Benton, How the University Works, C

4

.

6. Schwehn, Exiles from Eden.

7. Budde and Wright, Contested Allegiances.

Acknowledgments

While writing this book, I have been asked by friends if I am engaged in good work. At times, research and writing can seem far removed from the term good. Stress, isolation, bloodshot eyes, poor posture, and intermittent lack of sleep are certainly undeserving of the classification good. But such hazards are overshadowed by opportunities for exploration, dialogue, and creativity. These are luxuries, of course, that many forms of work do not permit. I am indeed fortunate to have had the time, energy, and space needed to research and write.

I am thankful for the extended community that helped make this text a good work: the professors who have taught and continue to teach me though I am long removed from their classrooms, my sisters and brothers at Cambridge Church of the Nazarene, colleagues at Eastern Nazarene College, and the many close friends who journeyed with me throughout the writing process—their names are too numerous to mention here. I am especially grateful for the friendship and theological dialogue I received during this project from Xochitl Alvizo and Jesse Cerda, Rusty Brian, Michael Cartwright, Mary Elizabeth Mullino Moore, Shelly Rambo, and Eric Severson.

I owe special thanks to Claire Wolfteich who played a formative role in the early stages of research and writing and to Liz Parsons, whose expertise on modern work and countless hours of editing helped clarify and tighten my argument. I am grateful for the friendship and dialogue. Also, I am deeply indebted to Bryan Stone, whose endless energy and support made this book possible. Bryan has invested countless hours in my professional and theological development, only part of which is made evident in the subsequent pages. Bryan’s dedication as a teacher and advisor is only surpassed by his friendship, for which I am extremely thankful.

Finally, I am thankful for Nell who has sustained me in innumerable ways through the research, writing, and publication process. Her partnership in life, ministry, and academics is a constant source of joy. I could not have done this without her.

1

Introduction

Toward an Ecclesiology of Work

In 1972, Studs Terkel published a collection of oral histories called Working. After countless interviews and conversations with everyday workers across America, he compiled the results. The text gained immediate attention. The hundreds of reflections on modern work struck a chord with Americans and made vivid what no study or survey had previously. In Terkel’s oral histories, the complex intersections between work and the worker were told, not as raw data, but as story. Stories, of course, exhibit profound depth amidst their simplicity. As researchers and theorists attempted to explain work, Terkel exposed it.

Terkel introduces Working as a book that is, by its very nature, about violence. Work, he explains, is about violence to the spirit as well as to the body . . . to survive the day is triumph enough for the walking wounded among the great many of us.¹ This is not, of course, the nature of work for all persons. Through his many interviews, Terkel does discover a happy few who find and savor their daily job. But he wonders if satisfaction at work tells us more about the person than about the task. The common attribute for this small percentage of workers, Terkel suggests, is that they find meaning to their work well over and beyond the reward of the paycheck.² Over the past forty years, the popularity of Terkel’s collection has not waned. Despite changes in industries, technological advances, and significant social, political, and economic shifts, the testimonies of workers in the 1970s continue to strike a chord with workers today. For many people, work is still violent; for a happy few, work is satisfying.

For centuries, Christian theologians have wrestled with understanding everyday human work.³ If work is violent, from where does the violence arise? Is it intrinsic in work itself, or only in our distortions of work? Similarly, what makes work meaningful or satisfactory? Is there something we might call redeemed work and what would it look like? Christian theology can engage these types of questions through a variety of resources within its tradition. From a creation that is declared good, to the curse of toil in Gen 3, and the new creation pronounced in Jesus Christ, Christian theology offers various lenses for explaining the nature and possibilities of human work.⁴ And yet, explanations of work seem always to fall short. Understanding work appears beyond our grasp since the nature and contextual realities of work are constantly shifting.

The difficulty in understanding work is not surprising since work, as a subject, suffers from an inevitable ambiguity.⁵ Work is an inescapable reality corresponding directly to human needs and flourishing. Without work humans cannot live, and yet persons suffer and endure injustices and inequities constantly in their work. The ambiguity is only furthered by the fact that work resists definition.⁶ It is elusive, constantly escaping the grasp of rigid description or classification. Terkel’s oral histories help, but David Jensen may have summarized it best in saying, Attempting to define work is as elusive as defining the human person. Most of us have a rather gut-level reaction to work: we know it when we see it.⁷ Despite its ambiguity, work remains surprisingly tangible and commonplace. For this reason, work continually demands theological attention.

An underlying assumption of this text is that theology is a process of critical reflection on praxis.⁸ Theology is sometimes construed as theoretical or practical; the former concerned with right thinking, the latter with right action. Theology is also concerned with the interrelatedness of theory and action, or more specifically, the way theory and action are mutually informative and dependent. From this perspective, theology must engage the ordinary and commonplace practices of everyday life. The practices of everyday life are tangible expressions of the interrelatedness of theory and action. Even though few people may recognize the embedded theories and assumptions behind their actions, or the way their actions and experiences shape their thinking, a primary task of theology is to explore how the practices of everyday life exhibit this interrelatedness.⁹

Work is one of the most ordinary and commonplace practices of everyday life. From a modern, western perspective, work is often construed as paid employment, but a fuller understanding recognizes the centrality of work in every person’s life. From simple tasks of self-care to professional management, work is a daily reality faced equally by the underemployed and over-employed, by the poor and the wealthy, or by those who commute and those who stay home. Similarly, work is not confined to certain hours, days, locations, or spaces. Work is inescapably present on weekends and holidays, in the office and at home, on the clock and even in leisure. Karl Barth calls work, The active affirmation of human existence.¹⁰ Indeed, work is central to human experience, even if all experiences of work are different.¹¹

In Conversation

This study is a contribution to the multifaceted conversation about theology and work. Diverse theological perspectives, interests, and contexts of work have prompted a host of discussions concerning