wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] Spirituality is both personal and communal,

[PCUSA NEWS <PCUSA.NEWS@ECUNET.ORG>]

Note #9010 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

05598
Nov. 7, 2005

A public walk

Spirituality is both personal and communal, 
or nothing, theologian tells Covenant Network

by Jerry L. Van Marter

MEMPHIS, TN - The Biblical concept of righteousness is both personal and
corporate, and therefore the Christian faith journey is both inward and
outward, a renowned theologian and ethicist told the Covenant Network of
Presbyterians on Nov. 5 during the group's annual conference here.

	"The prophets measure Israel's faithfulness to God by covenantal
compliance," said Larry Rasmussen, a Lutheran former professor of social
ethics at Union Theological Seminary in New York. "Righteousness means that
discipleship is deeply personal and communal piety, or it is nothing. ... At
the same time, its domain is the whole of earthly life - or it is not
discipleship.... Walking the Way, then, is a journey inward inward tethered
to a journey outward, and never the one without the other."
 
	In all three Abrahamic religions - Christianity, Judaism and Islam -
discipleship is "public" in three ways, according to Rasmussen:

	Discipleship is about "people of the Way" and about "a community
pattern of life." Biblical writers variously refer to the Christian church as
"a body," "a holy nation," "a chosen race" and "a peculiar people." The Greek
word for church, "ekklesia," means a called meeting or an assembly, like a
town meeting.

	Discipleship is public, in that it is lived "across the whole of
earthly life." Said Rasmussen: "This whole includes what is poorly named
'spirituality,' namely a world within to match the world aspired to."

	Discipleship is publicly visible - "It is marked by rites and
practices that are strong enough to form the next generation and assure that
the faith has children and the children have faith."

	Christian discipleship is invariably linked to a call to follow,
Rasmussen continued, and that call, too, is both personal and public. "In the
gospels, Jesus' call to his disciples is direct, personal and very public,"
he said, "a call to ordinary people in their workaday world, to fold up the
nets, or close out the tax accounts and pack for a different future."

	Spiritual practices or disciplines - particularly the sacraments -
are the markers along the personal and communal journey of faith, supplying
"a moral pattern and moral guidance system," Rasmussen said. "Indeed, apart
from these practices, Christian moral discernment really has few markers at
all, and little real substance.

	"Without formative practices, what is called Christian judgment is
little more than an opinion poll of those who happen to be on the membership
rolls at the time. This is not discipleship."

	So, for instance, Baptism as a public spiritual practice is tied to
Paul's words in 2 Cor. 5: 17: "If anyone is united to Christ there is a new
world; everything old has passed away: See, everything has become new" (New
English Bible). 

	"Baptism is the focal practice that celebrates this new world in
which the previous ethnic identities and the inherited social definitions are
transcended and eliminated in Christ," Rasmussen said.

	Discipleship often means improvising in response to changing
circumstances. 

	Rasmussen, who was introduced as an ?environmental theologian,? said,
"What is shocking is that we seldom connect the waters of life of Baptism to
the waters of life on which absolutely all life utterly depends." To
dramatize the connection, he said, he once proposed that new Baptisms be
suspended until all the world's water is safe to drink - or else "we
consciously baptize with toxic water."

	To peals of laughter, Rasmussen conceded that "neither suggestion got
takers." But he added: "A few did get the connection."

	That example, Rasmussen said, points up the role spiritual practices
play in forming beliefs. "Beliefs mean nothing apart from practices," he
said, asking what good a "richly articulated theology of Baptism would be,"
for example, "if the community never gathered around the baptismal font."

	Practices shape belief and give rise to theology, he said. "They are
the doing that provokes reflection and gives rise to meanings that can
reorder our ways."

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