{"id":5861,"date":"2022-09-26T21:42:11","date_gmt":"2022-09-26T21:42:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/learn.elca.org\/jle\/?p=5861"},"modified":"2022-09-29T21:41:30","modified_gmt":"2022-09-29T21:41:30","slug":"covenant-as-a-biblical-anchor-some-thoughts-for-the-upcoming-social-statement-on-government-and-civic-obligation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/learn.elca.org\/jle\/covenant-as-a-biblical-anchor-some-thoughts-for-the-upcoming-social-statement-on-government-and-civic-obligation\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Covenant\u2019 as a Biblical Anchor: Some thoughts for the upcoming Social Statement on Government and Civic Obligation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Currently, the Task Force on Government and Civic Engagement is beginning the process of creating a social statement on faith and civic life.\u00a0\u00a0 The Journal of Lutheran Ethics has invited short pieces from ethicists on this subject for the December 2022 issue.\u00a0 To start this process, Stewart Herman has offered the following which also fits the topic of the October, 2022 issue on the nature and vocation of the church today. To learn more about the social statement process, go to elca.org\/civicsandfaith<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

[1] Democracy\u2014as in self-government\u2014is under threat today, as the divisions between red and blue, Republican and Democrat, harden in mutual ignorance, suspicion, contempt and even hate.\u00a0\u00a0 The duty of the church is to speak to this division, to offer a clear and hopefully simple way to re-frame our national political community in a way that might be appealing and reconciling to both sides.<\/p>\n

[2] As Lutherans, we need to start with a Biblical approach.\u00a0 \u00a0We have Luther\u2019s two-kingdoms framework, a sturdy if problematic means of conceptualizing divine grace and earthly government.\u00a0 Indeed, I made it central to the \u201cGovernment and Civic Engagement in the United States\u201d social message that I helped draft for the ELCA.[1]<\/a>\u00a0 Still, I think deeper Biblical rootage is needed, and no image has deeper political roots than \u2018covenant\u2019.\u00a0 What do we need in our politics?\u00a0 In essence, we need a renewal of the covenant that once bound and should again bind us together.<\/p>\n

[3] A covenant is a device through which parties seek to render each other trustworthy.\u00a0 While it can be nailed down in the legal stipulations of a contract, covenanting\u2014as a process\u2014typically involves an evolving relationship, where trust is generated and sustained by the gestures the parties make towards each other.<\/p>\n

[4] For the authors of the Old Testament, political community started at Sinai, when God \u201ccut\u201d (Biblical term) a covenant with a ragtag band of dispirited ex-slaves from Egypt.\u00a0 God promised protection in exchange for obedience.\u00a0 That covenant, highlighted by the Ten Commandments, provided a structure for their communal life.\u00a0 The covenant is, I would argue, the defining image of political community in the Old Testament. \u00a0It worked then, and it can work now, because its aim is the protection and flourishing of the covenanting parties.<\/p>\n

[5] The legitimacy of government rests, then as now, upon mutual promises to which sovereign and people are both accountable and establish trust between each other.\u00a0 Think of the stern warnings which the prophets sent to Israelite monarchs, holding them to the covenant.\u00a0\u00a0 Covenant provides a moral and legal framework through which sovereign and people work out their differences.\u00a0 The enormous change we face is that in our world of self-governance, the sovereign IS the people.\u00a0 So covenant is a mutual understanding among political equals.<\/p>\n

[6] What we have lost in the American political context, of course, is that sense of mutual promises that was the core of early American politics.\u00a0\u00a0 Covenant provides us a way to speak delicately about the breakdown of politics during the past thirty years.\u00a0 My main point here is that if we are serious about a biblical grounding for a Lutheran view of politics, government, etc., I don\u2019t think we could do better than try to develop a Lutheran understanding of this venerable concept for explaining relations with God and within a political community.<\/p>\n

[7] Covenant is not a developed political concept in Lutheranism as it is in other reformed Protestant traditions.\u00a0 But consider\u2014and this is where it gets interesting\u2014how some of the main features of Lutheran theology express covenant.\u00a0 Indeed, we live within multiple covenants.\u00a0 Think of baptism, which is God\u2019s comprehensive covenant with us for our entire lives.\u00a0 Think of marriage, which is a set of binding promises of love and commitment between partners.\u00a0 Think of the Eucharist as the re-embodiment of God\u2019s covenant with us through the death and resurrection of Jesus.\u00a0\u00a0 Congregations are held together by the promises members make to the church.\u00a0 Covenant is hardly foreign to Lutheran theology and ethics; it simply needs to be extended into our political theology and ethics.<\/p>\n

[8] Consider how covenant as an idea works.\u00a0 It can be used as a verb as well as a noun.\u00a0 The need for covenant-ing arises whenever different parties find themselves in relationship and that relationship needs to be explained, clarified and made the basis for future relationship.\u00a0\u00a0 It invites development in a variety of contexts and provides a basis for mutual expectations that enables people to live together.\u00a0 The common feature is promises made and kept by both sides.<\/p>\n

[9] The idea of covenant should not be idealized, of course.\u00a0 \u00a0Covenants are evil when they exclude.\u00a0 Covenants in real estate embedded discrimination in the housing market. The theology of South African apartheid rested upon an exclusive covenant between God and whites. \u00a0\u00a0The religious sanctions for slavery, oppression of natives, South African apartheid, etc., all involve dividing lines based upon weak or perverse Biblical warrants.\u00a0 A Lutheran theological perspective would affirm the idea that covenants need to be inclusive.\u00a0 It would take note of the resilient if interrupted progress towards expanding the covenant, in both Old Testament and New. \u00a0Pentecost, of course, was one of the breakthrough moments.\u00a0 By now we realize that there are no grounds for excluding anyone from God’s covenant; therefore, earthly covenants start with a bias towards inclusivity.<\/p>\n

[10] What does this mean for earthly politics and government, from a Lutheran perspective?\u00a0 Politics, in my super-simplified definition, is the art of holding a people together in some sort of community.\u00a0 It requires identity, some idea of who a people are.\u00a0\u00a0 Our language of individualism sorely lacks the capacity to explain this relationship.\u00a0 It can explain what is good for me and mine, but not what is good for us.<\/p>\n

[11] Covenant, in contrast, is an inherently relational term precisely because it focuses on who is included, and the quality of relationship.\u00a0 It is a way of explaining and prescribing how people might live together in harmony.\u00a0 On the flip side, it is also a prophetic term, providing a biblical frame of reference to explain where inclusivity has failed.\u00a0 What are racism, xenophobia, misogyny, and hostility to LGBTQ+ persons at root other than the conviction that some categories of people are simply not included within the national covenant?\u00a0 \u00a0What are ecocide, biocide and even genocide other than the willful destruction of life which God has included within the creation covenant articulated in Genesis?<\/p>\n

[12] Of course, qualifications are needed when covenant is used in the political sphere.\u00a0 As far as government is concerned, a distinction may and needs to be drawn between residents and citizens for defensible public purposes, but the Lutheran bias (as seen in the social message) would be towards inclusion, particularly where that distinction serves to disenfranchise or disempower residents and undocumented aliens.<\/p>\n

[13] Worse, all covenants fail at some point, and so they need to be renewed; that is a doleful Biblical truth that runs from Sinai to the Cross.\u00a0\u00a0 But covenants need not be brittle constructs which simply crumble, like broken contracts.\u00a0 They rest on the capacity of the parties to recommit themselves.\u00a0 Why else would God keep calling the wayward people of Israel to return to the Covenant?\u00a0 Or why would Jesus present himself as a sacrifice for the future of humanity?\u00a0 Covenants are renewed as one or both parties commit themselves in order to elicit a reciprocal commitment from the other party.\u00a0\u00a0 As such, covenanting has a dynamic, resilient process.\u00a0 It is a tool, a device, for creating and sustaining relationships.<\/p>\n

[14] The American political covenant is now broken; I doubt many people would disagree.\u00a0 We need to proceed with deep conviction that it can be restored.\u00a0\u00a0 So what if we Lutherans really believed in our hearts that God\u2019s covenant extended beyond baptism, eucharist, marriage, friendship and all the familiar forms of mutual promise-making and promise-keeping to include our national life?\u00a0 What then might we empowered to say?\u00a0\u00a0 This, of course, is the challenge to the church as a whole\u2014and to the Task Force that is drafting the document. If the Task Force is looking for a simple, Biblically grounded way to frame our political crisis, I suggest they might want to consider the idea of covenant as the central frame for understanding American government and civic obligation.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> https:\/\/download.elca.org\/ELCA%20Resource%20Repository\/Government_and_Civic_Engagement_Social_Message.pdf<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Currently, the Task Force on Government and Civic Engagement is beginning the process of creating a social statement on faith and civic life.\u00a0\u00a0 The Journal of Lutheran Ethics has invited short pieces from ethicists on this subject for the December 2022 issue.\u00a0 To start this process, Stewart Herman has offered the following which also fits […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,27,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-civil","category-elca-history-includes-predecessor-bodies","category-politics"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\u2018Covenant\u2019 as a Biblical Anchor: Some thoughts for the upcoming Social Statement on Government and Civic Obligation - Journal of Lutheran Ethics<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/learn.elca.org\/jle\/covenant-as-a-biblical-anchor-some-thoughts-for-the-upcoming-social-statement-on-government-and-civic-obligation\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"\u2018Covenant\u2019 as a Biblical Anchor: Some thoughts for the upcoming Social Statement on Government and Civic Obligation - 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