Matthew Kaemingk - Reformed Public Theology: A Global Vision for Life in the World

2021 by Matthew Kaemingk

Published by Baker Academic

a division of Baker Publishing Group

PO Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287

www.bakeracademic.com

Ebook edition created 2021

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meansfor example, electronic, photocopy, recordingwithout the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

ISBN 978-1-4934-3085-7

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION, NIV Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture quotations labeled ESV are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (ESV), copyright 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. ESV Text Edition: 2016

Scripture quotations labeled NRSV are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Contents

Dedication

The gospel in its fullness must be directed to all dimensions of human life. Christs atoning work offers liberation for people in their cultural endeavors, in their family lives, in their educational pursuits, in their quests for sexual fulfillment, in their desire for physical well-being. It also offers liberation in the building of political institutions and the making of public policy.

Richard Mouw, Political Evangelism

The Holy Worldliness of Richard Mouw

This book was composed in honor of Richard Mouw (1940), one of the worlds leading voices in Reformed philosophy, ethics, and public theology. With an academic career spanning more than fifty years, Mouw has published more than twenty books, hundreds of articles, and has traveled the world over, speaking on a wide range of public issues including politics, race, science, globalization, interfaith dialogue, nuclear disarmament, poverty, marketplace ethics, and Christian education.

Addressing these complex global issues, Richard Mouw has consistently drawn insight and inspiration from the Reformed tradition. Its hymns and catechisms, devotionals and prayers; its historic works of philosophy and theology; all these inform the way Mouw engages public life. For over fifty years Mouw has made a career of harvesting these theological resources and articulating, in creative and generative ways, how they might inform Christian engagement in public life.

Even though Richard Mouw loves Reformed theology, he does so with critical appreciation, not blind adoration. Calvinistic chauvinism makes him bristle. Mouw readily names the traditions weaknesses and blind spots. He repeatedly calls upon his fellow Calvinists to humble themselves, listen to their critics, and learn from other traditions, other faiths, and other cultures. After listening with genuine curiosity and vulnerability, Mouw calls upon the tradition to publicly confess, get up, and reform yet again.

For Mouw, Reformed public theology can never be an abstract intellectual exercise. Instead, it must carefully deal with the deep complexity, beauty, and brokenness that is life in this world . Thus Mouws work should be understood as a constant search for a holy worldliness, as he calls it, a righteous way of being in the world . Longing to faithfully navigate the complex avenues and arteries of public life, Mouws writings are shot through with this search for a holy worldliness.

The Search for Holy Worldliness

Richard Mouw came of age in the 1960s, and his public theology developed amid the tempest that was American public life in the age of revolution. As a doctoral student in philosophy at the University of Chicago and also both an evangelical Christian and a passionate activist, Mouw was particularly engaged with the issues of poverty, racism, and civil rights. He was an active member of the anti-war movement and the SNCC (the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee). In all this, Mouw was fueled by a deep and pious love for Christ and a burning desire to see Christs justice made manifest in public life. He would study the political philosophy of Kant, Locke, and Rousseau during the week; then the weekends would be split between organizing in the streets and worship in the sanctuary. From an early age, Mouw was convinced that he could, in fact that he should , sing songs of praise and songs of protest. The reign of God had to be proclaimed, not simply in the church but in the city as well. From an early age, these three callings to philosophical reflection, political action, and spiritual devotion were constantly churning in Mouws mind and heart in uncomfortable but profoundly generative ways.

Dissatisfied with the public imaginations of the Christian right and the Christian left, the young Mouw ultimately found a home in Reformed public theology. Therein Mouw has spent a career developing and embodying what we might call a third way for American Christians to engage in public life. This third way comes to the fore in Mouws somewhat playful use of paradoxical phrases like holy worldliness, political evangelism, convicted civility, principled pluralism, baptismal politics, and common grace. In each of these phrases, Mouw invites his readers to question their more narrow or ideologically bound paradigms for thinking about the connections between faith and public life. What if evangelism is both spiritual and material? What if baptism is both personal and political? What if Christians are called to be a public force of conviction and civility, principles and pluralism? What if Gods grace is uniquely manifest in the cross of Jesus Christ and yet we also see Gods goodness mysteriously manifesting itself in our Muslim neighbors? Writing for an American audience gripped by myopic ideologies bereft of humility, creativity, or imagination, Mouws playful questioning and vulnerable curiosity consistently model a public-theological imagination that invites a creative dialogue rather than a didactic monologue. The conversation is not closed down: it is opened up.

Following his doctoral studies at the University of Chicago, Richard Mouw moved to Michigan in the summer of 1968 to serve Calvin College as a professor of Christian philosophy. While there, he and his wife, Phyllis, helped to establish an intentional Christian community in the heart of one of the poorest neighborhoods in Grand Rapids. At the time, Worden Street was a largely Black neighborhood that had been hit hard by economic and racialized forces within the city. White residents (many of them Reformed) had fled the neighborhood for the comfort and security of the suburbs. Richard and Phyllis, along with their young son, Dirk, joined several other Christian families to reinvest in the neighborhood. The families purchased some homes on Worden Street and founded what they called the Community. The fourfold purpose of the Community came to embody much of the public theology that Richard Mouw wrote about for the next fifty years. First, they would regularly gather for meals, prayer, worship, and Scripture study. Second, they would house and mentor young Calvin students. Third, they would live alongside, learn from, serve, and invest in the neighbors and the surrounding neighborhood. Fourth, they would support the neighborhoods local Christian school and its efforts to serve the neighborhood children with high-quality Christian education. Here in the Community, we see the unique combination of education and action, piety and community, friendship and mentoring, as shown in the life and career of Richard Mouw.