a framework, agenda & strategy for christian social reform

Contents
About the Jubilee Centre
About the authors
Foreword
Preface

1. A new framework for the social order - John Ashcroft and Michael Schluter

Part 1: framework
2. Christianity as a relational religion - Graham Cole
3. Relationships in the Christian tradition - Jeremy Ive
4. The ethical authority of the biblical social vision - Christopher Wright
5. The biblical agenda: issues of interpretation - John Ashcroft

Part 2: agenda
6. The relational dynamic - John Ashcroft
7. Nationhood - Julian Rivers
8. Government - Julian Rivers
9. Family - Michael Schluter
10. Welfare - Michael Schluter
11. Finance - Paul Mills
12. Economy - Paul Mills
13. Criminal justice - Jonathan Burnside
14. International relations and defence - Jeremy Ive
15. A relational and coherent vision - Michael Schluter

Part 3: strategy
16. The potential for Relationism - John Ashcroft
17. Case-studies - Michael Schluter
18. Epilogue - Michael Schluter

About the authors

John Ashcroft MTh is research director for the Jubilee Centre and for the Relationships Foundation where he is currently leading projects on public-service reform and relational auditing. He holds a degree in theology from Oxford University and a Master of Theology from King’s College, London. In addition to writing numerous research papers he has co-authored Political Christians in a Plural Society ( Jubilee Policy Group, 1993 ), Relationships in the NHS (RSM Press, 2000 ) and The Case for Inter-professional Collaboration (Blackwell, 2005 ).

Jonathan Burnside PhD is lecturer in Criminal Law at the School of Law, University of Bristol. He is a former Visiting Fellow in Jewish Law at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. He is the author of The Signs of Sin: Seriousness of Offence in Biblical Law (Sheffield Academic Press, 2002 ) and Religion and Rehabilitation: The Development of Faith-Based Therapeutic Communities in Prison (Willan, 2004 ). His work for the Jubilee Centre includes The Status and Welfare of Immigrants and a review of the presentation of sexual offences in biblical law. In the early 1990 s he spearheaded Relational Justice for the Relationships Foundation. He is editor of the Relational Justice Bulletin.

Revd Graham Cole PhD was the Principal of Ridley College, University of Melbourne (1992–2001) and lectured in Christian Thought. He has served as a member of the Council of the University of Melbourne. Recently he was appointed Professor of Biblical and Systematic Theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois. He has published articles in Churchman, Expository Times, Enlightenment and Dissent, The Philosopher, Tyndale Bulletin, Reformed Theological Review, Journal of Christian Education and Themelios. He has contributed to a number of books and dictionaries including IVP’s New Dictionary of Christian Ethics and Pastoral Theology. He has also had poetry published in a number of Australian and American literary journals.

Revd Jeremy Ive PhD holds degrees in History, Philosophy, Politics and Theology from the Universities of Rhodes (Grahamstown, South Africa), Cambridge and London. He trained for the Church of England Ministry at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, and is currently active in parish ministry in Kent. He was also involved, in different capacities, in the Newick Park Initiative (later Relationships Foundation International and now Concordis International) peace-building programmes in South Africa, Rwanda and Sudan.

Paul Mills PhD graduated in economics at Cambridge University and worked as a researcher at the Jubilee Centre for a year before returning to the University to complete a PhD in economics. He has worked as an economist since 1992 and currently specializes in finance. He is co-author of Islamic Finance: Theory and Practice (Palgrave Macmillan). He has been on the writing group of Cambridge Papers since 1992 and is on the Jubilee Centre Advisory Board.

Julian Rivers MA, LLM, MIur, PhD, is Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Bristol, UK. He studied law at Cambridge and Gottingen Universities before appointment to Bristol in 1993 . His research interests lie mainly in the area of legal and constitutional theory, with a particular interest in the interplay between law and religion. He translated and wrote an introduction to Robert Alexy’s Theory of Constitutional Rights (Oxford University Press, 2002 ) and has contributed to Law and Religion (Ashgate, 2000 ), Studies in Christian Ethics, vol. 13, no. 2 (2000), Law and Religion (Oxford University Press, 2001 ), and Christian Perspectives on the Limits of Law (Paternoster, 2002 ). He has been on the writing group of Cambridge Papers since 1992 and is a member of the UCCF Trust Board and is on the Advisory Board of the Jubilee Centre.

Michael Schluter PhD is the founder and Chairman of the Jubilee Centre. He is also chairman of the Keep Sunday Special Campaign and the Relationships Foundation. He has a PhD in agricultural economics from Cornell University and worked in East Africa for six years as a consultant for the World Bank and as a research fellow of the International Food Policy Research Institute. Dr Schluter co-authored The R Factor (Hodder, 1993 ) and The R Option (Relationships Foundation, 2003 ). He has been a founding member of a number of social reform initiatives, including the Newick Park Initiative (now called Concordis International), the Keep Sunday Special Campaign, Credit Action, Citylife, Keep Time for Children and Equity for Africa. He has been on the writing group for Cambridge Papers since 1992.

Revd Chris Wright PhD is currently International Ministries Director at Langham Partnership International. He also serves as the Advisory Board chairman of the Jubilee Centre and is honorary president of Crosslinks, an Anglican missionary society. He is the author of several books, including Living as the People of God (IVP, 1983), God’s People in God’s Land (Paternoster, 1990) and Old Testament Ethics for the People of God (IVP, 2004), as well as commentaries on Deuteronomy and Ezekiel, and for five years was the editor of the journal Themelios. After graduating from Cambridge he taught Latin, Greek and Religious Studies in Belfast and then returned to Cambridge to do a PhD. He served in an Anglican parish in Tonbridge, and then taught Old Testament in Union Biblical Seminary, India, for five years. Prior to assuming his current post, he served from 1993 as Principal of All Nations Christian College.

1. A new framework for the social order extract

The Jubilee Centre’s journey

The background to this book is life in Nairobi in the 1970s and the questions Christian students were asking at that time. As Christians, should they be Marxists, following the violent revolution in neighbouring Ethiopia which had brought to an end, as they saw it, centuries of oppression of farmers by feudal landlords? Or should they be Socialists, following the ‘ujamaa’ socialism of Julius Nyerere in Tanzania who had forced people to live in villages so that they could more easily be provided with access to water and education? Or should they follow the Capitalism of Jomo Kenyatta in Kenya, where land was allocated increasingly without regard to historical or family ties, simply on the basis of ‘market forces’? Was the critique of these ideologies to be rooted purely in the social sciences, or did the social vision of the Bible point to an alternative to Marxist and Capitalist theories of development?

The questions being asked in East Africa in the 1970s continue to echo around the globe today. Anti-globalization campaigns suggest that the triumph of democratic Capitalism is not universally accepted, yet little in the way of a convincing alternative is proposed. Current concerns about the environment, social capital, the future of the nation-state and the ‘clash of civilizations’ suggest that different accounts of the goals of our common life need to be resolved. Human suffering persists, not just in low-income countries but amid the social fragmentation of high-income countries as well. In both contexts there is a relational crisis: not in the sense that all is bad (though, as we shall see, there are plenty of causes for concern) or that we can look back with nostalgia to some golden age in the past, but rather because there are critical choices before us. Personal, organizational and wider social relationships are the key to our well-being: we need to understand the proper nature of these relationships, recognize their importance and value them accordingly. These relationships are under pressure. This may be seen in the time-pressure that weakens relationships in families and organizations, the distorting of relationships in public services through ill-conceived targets, or the impact of highly mobile capital on local economies. The choice before us is, therefore, whether to create a social order that sustains relationships, or to risk their continuing erosion.

The Jubilee Centre was set up in 1983 to study, disseminate and apply a biblical vision for society. This led to a number of reform initiatives. One of the first was a series of consultations involving senior African National Congress (ANC) and Afrikaner figures to look at options for a post-apartheid South Africa in the late 1980s, seeking shared principles for such issues as land reform, constitutional structures, business ownership, urban policy and education. Around the same time UK initiatives were developed to pursue an agenda for strengthening relationships in families and neighbourhoods. This included research and campaigning on such issues as Sunday trading, consumer credit and debt, support for family carers, reform of the criminal justice system and exploring the social impact of labour mobility.

At the time of writing, the Jubilee Centre and its off-shoot charities are involved in peace-building in Sudan, seeking a lasting and just peace for a conflict that has claimed two million lives over the last twenty years; developing community finance initiatives in the UK to tackle pockets of persistent long-term urban unemployment that continue to blight the lives of individuals and families who are excluded from the hopes and prosperity that so many of us take for granted; seeking reform of our public services – sometimes literally a matter of life and death for the most vulnerable; and building a social environment to sustain civic society on which our well-being depends.

This is not a book of political philosophy, but a book for those with an active concern for social reform. It is not just the fruit of thirty years of reflection on biblical teaching relating to political ideologies, but is also the fruit of over twenty years of active engagement in public life in Britain and beyond. It is based on five main convictions:

1. That social reform is an important response to human need, as part of our discipleship and love of both God and neighbour, and as a proper part of the mission of the church in the world.
2. That the Bible can guide this process, informing our understanding of what constitutes right relationships and offering a paradigm of a relational social order.
3. That our approach to social reform must focus on relationships, both in setting the goals for our lives as individuals and as a society, and in setting the agenda for a social order designed to sustain those relationships.
4. That social reform must be guided and inspired by new ideas that tackle the root systemic causes of social, economic and political problems. Implicit in this conviction is the belief that the ‘-isms’ that shape life today are flawed.
5. That it is important to work with those who do not share our faith, which requires that we create a shared account of the common good.

This last conviction is a product of the journeys that Jubilee Manifesto traces. One journey has been from major social issues to discerning the heart of the biblical social vision, drawing on a paradigmatic approach to biblical social ethics. The second, parallel, journey has been to work out how this can be communicated and applied today. In the UK context this has meant addressing the issue of how a vision for social reform can be articulated which is both true to our faith and also provides the basis for engaging with those who are not Christians. In practice, reform requires effective persuasion, not just the assertion of competing truth claims. These two journeys come together around the theme of relationships, a key theme of our faith. Relationships lie at the heart of a biblical social vision, address the core of contemporary social, political and economic problems, and provide a language and agenda which is faithful to the Christian tradition whilst also open and inclusive to those with whom we must work if our concern for social reform is to deliver real change.

The Jubilee Centre’s journey, and the different personal journeys of each author are, of course, part of that much wider and longer journey, stretching over millennia, of a community of people learning what it means to ‘walk in the ways of the Lord’ (Deut.10:12). With its many tensions and dilemmas it can sometimes feel like walking a tightrope. Faithfulness to Scripture and inclusive engagement with society are not always easy to combine. Ideal visions and pragmatic solutions are hard to hold together. It is hard to combine excellence in biblical studies and secular academic disciplines, professional influence, campaigning and entrepreneurial skill. This is work in progress. The magnitude and breadth of the questions that we address mean that, at least in this volume, the answers cannot be comprehensive. Our priority here is to give an account of the big picture.

There are individuals and organizations in many countries who have similar concerns and whose thinking and action have made a real difference. In the course of our projects we have worked with and learned from many people. This book does not claim to be a comprehensive review of the literature or of Christian contributions to social reform. Rather it presents a case-study in articulating and implementing a reform agenda. Our journey continues and we hope that this book will be part of the process of continuing to learn from as well as supporting others who share a commitment to reform. ...

14 . International relations and defence extract

The new global context

Nations are linked together by a number of factors: geography, trade, immigration, cultural influences and the exchange of ideas. The increased scale, nature and speed of these links is a feature of globalization. The revolution in modern communications means that events in other countries are immediately relayed across the world through satellite or the Internet. The digital revolution, for all the uncertainties that it has engendered, is changing the structure of the world’s community, speeding up transactions and shortening lines of communication. This has both negative and positive consequences. On the one hand, there is openness to democratic ideas and the protection of human rights. On the other hand, there is also the less easily quantifiable process of the spread of consumerist values and the domination of culture by materialistic ideas. The structure of society is changing from one dominated by the mass mobilization of labour and the predetermined production of goods, to one oriented towards the diverse demands of a fragmented, yet closely interconnected market.

The fact of this much greater interdependency and vulnerability gives added poignancy and force to Cain’s plea, ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ (Gen. 4:9). Our responsibility to our neighbour needs also to be seen through the lens of Jesus’ teaching, notably in the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37; Matt.22 :24–30; Mark 12:28–31). Being a neighbour can mean many different things: not only spatial proximity, but also an awareness despite distance, through a variety of different media and connections. These give us a responsibility for the other, no matter how physically distant or culturally dissimilar they are. The difficulty is that such an absolute injunction is impossible to fulfil globally and cannot be the basis for our setting of practical priorities. Furthermore, the sheer disproportion in the world’s distribution of wealth and technical or economic power makes it difficult to judge how we should dispose of our resources.

Questions about the proper goals of a nation and how they should be pursued are at the heart of the issues of international relations and defence. Typically national goals might be articulated in terms of economic growth, national security and political or cultural influence. The means of achieving these are through military power, economic strength, political negotiation and recourse to international law and supra-national bodies. These means are interrelated with economic strength – a significant factor in sustaining both military power and political influence. The previous chapters, particularly those on nationhood, government, finance and economics, have a significant bearing on these issues.

In this chapter we start by looking at the universality of God’s law as a basis for international relations. We then consider the importance of honouring past commitments and building peace. Where this fails we then consider the case for just and limited war, and the structure and political control of defence forces. The norms that govern international conduct are not easy to extrapolate from Scripture. The situation of either Israel in the Old Testament or that of the small Christian communities within the Roman Empire do not provide us with a direct model for the conduct of international affairs. However, within the wider perspective of the growth and development of the kingdom of God, principles can be identified. We need to take account of the transformations for good or bad (it is not always straightforward to discern which is which) in the structure of the Israelite polity. We also need to take into account today’s changed situation with the opening out of the covenantal boundaries in the establishment of the Christian church, and the changed perspective occasioned by the destruction of Jerusalem in ad 70. Nevertheless, common themes can be traced, and models suggested.

God’s law provides a universal basis for international relations

In the ancient world, national identity was inseparably bound to religion. The gods were regarded as the embodiment of national power and, in turn, the well-being of nations was tied to the status of their particular gods. Relations with a national god were considered as a transaction: local arrangements were made applicable to a particular nation or group, but not necessarily to others, except if they were conquered – in which case the gods of the defeated nation were made to abase themselves before the deity of the conquering power alongside their defeated worshippers (Gnuse 1997:153 –154). In such circumstances, law could not be other than localized and culturally relative. ...