May 5, 2013 | 8:00, 9:30, and 11:00 a.m.

In the Hyphenated Spaces

Joyce Shin
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 111
Deuteronomy 6:4–9
1 Corinthians 9:1–3, 19–23

“I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some.”
1 Corinthians 9:22b (NRSV)

For some strange reason, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.

Martin Luther King Jr.

“Character is dead. Attempts to revive it will yield little. Its time has passed” (James Davison Hunter, The Death of Character, p. xiii). This is how James Davison Hunter, American sociologist and professor at University of Virginia, begins his book on the demise of moral education of American children today. Professor Hunter traces the history of moral education in America and examines the different theories applied to the task of “building character.” What he argues is that none of these theories are going to be successful or effective as long as inclusiveness is the paramount value that reigns in schools, in civic institutions, in the public arena.

His basic argument is this: that the formation of moral character requires a uniform, cohesive culture in which the norms, expectations, and beliefs that are passed down from one generation to the next are embedded in creeds, stories, traditions, and rituals that all make up a consistent and coherent view of the world. Given that we no longer live in a monolithic culture in which all the moral norms, societal expectations, and religious beliefs and practices cohere, we simply cannot expect individuals to develop moral character, or moral integrity. In other words, according to Professor Hunter, moral integrity depends on cultural uniformity, and since there is no chance that we will ever return to cultural uniformity, character is dead.

I’m curious to know what you think of this argument. Do you think that the social, cultural, and religious pluralism of our environment today takes away any chance of becoming a people with moral integrity?

Let’s not answer this too quickly. It is true that we do not live in a monolithic culture and that we likely never will. It is true that older generations cannot assume that younger generations are going to grow up with religious and moral knowledge that is consistently reinforced in every sphere of life. The Great Commandment taught first by Moses and then again by Jesus, to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind,” cannot be expected to appear on every doorpost and on the city gates.

In all honesty, as a parent, I do worry about this. As much as I hope that my fourth-grade daughter will be so impressed by the church’s loving presentation of a Bible to her and by my talking with her about Bible stories that have meaning for me, I am not confident that these things, plus everything else her father and I try to do, will be enough to make an impression on her heart, mind, and soul, because I know that she comes into contact with so many other religions, belief systems, and values in her daily life.

Her exposure to the wide world of religions and cultures began in nursery school. In nursery school, teachers invited all the parents to share with the class a holiday celebrated by their family at home. The first mom to come to class taught the children about Eid, the final day of Ramadan, on which the month of fasting for Muslims ends. It was a lovely celebration, and the children got a delicious taste of this important religious holiday. A month later, when my daughter wanted to invite her new friend Olivia for a play date on a Sunday after church, she asked me if I thought Olivia also went to church. I suspected that Olivia and her family went to the Lutheran church in our neighborhood, but since I didn’t know for sure, I suggested, “Why don’t you ask Olivia what religion she is?” Right away my daughter dismissed the idea, saying, “Ever since we learned about Eid, everyone says they are Muslim.” (I wrote that story down so that I would never forget it.)

My husband and I came to see our daughter’s nursery school classroom as a microcosm, and during that year we often remarked to ourselves on how much the world has changed since we were kids. Though we were, and still are, convinced that friendships and familiarity with people of different religious and cultural backgrounds is just how things should be, we did and do sometimes feel ill-equipped, without a handle, on how children develop moral integrity in the complex moral cultures in which they live.

It is a question that really applies not just to children, but also to all adults. The question can be rephrased to ask how does anyone become a person of moral integrity in the midst of many religions and cultures? Is it even possible?

If we take seriously the Great Commandment taught by Moses and Jesus, that the totality of our love, the length of our life, and all that we are capable of should be devoted to God and that this commandment should be reinforced when we are at home and when we are not at home—in other words, in every place—and when we lie down and when we rise—in other words, at all times—do we think it possible to become people of moral integrity in the midst of multiple religions and cultures?

In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul himself confronts this issue. In order to understand why Paul is up against a similar issue, it may be helpful for us to picture Paul in his environment. As we know from his letters, Paul spent his life in cities. As a missionary, he made his rounds to strategically located cities of the northeast Mediterranean basin. That is why some scholars have attributed to Paul “the first urban movement” of Christianity (Wayne Meeks, The First Urban Christians). The cities of the Mediterranean world were at the frontier of great political and social changes. New Testament scholar Wayne Meeks describes Paul’s world in this way: “For a very long time groups of foreigners had gathered in each city: merchants and artisans following the armies or in search of better markets or better access to transportation, persons enslaved and displaced by war or piracy and now set free, political exiles, soldiers of fortune. These noncitizen residents often retained some sense of ethnic identity by establishing local cults of their native gods or by forming a voluntary association,” resembling religions of one kind or another (Wayne Meeks, The First Urban Christians, p. 13). As you can imagine, in this setting different social, cultural, and religious beliefs, norms, and practices converged, and as we find in Paul’s letters, conflicts abounded. No matter the specific conflict at hand, debates both in the church and in the Greco-Roman world at large were often framed by people on different sides who argued against compromising, against accommodating, and against conciliating the other side, because to do so would entail some loss of their own freedom and integrity.

Whenever Paul addressed any of these conflicts in his letters, he applied a reconciliatory approach of “being all things to all people.” This was the consistent norm by which Paul carried out his work, and he was criticized for it. It seems that some people criticized Paul for being somewhat of a chameleon. Because he accommodated different groups who lived by beliefs and norms different from his own, Paul’s critics questioned his integrity.

So in chapter 9 we find Paul laying out as clearly as he can the approach he takes as a missionary. Indeed, he says to his critics, “I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings.” This means that to the Jews Paul became as a Jew, to those under the law, he became as one under the law, and to those outside the law, he became as one outside the law. On the surface, it may appear as though Paul is behaving inconsistently, depending on the company he keeps, but in truth, as a former Jew under the law, and now as an apostle for Christ, no longer under the law, Paul has no difficulty identifying with and caring for both Jews and Gentiles. Not only does Paul feel no tension between these loyalties, but he also grounds his loyalties to both Jews and Gentiles in his ultimate loyalty to God.

As a missionary, Paul had to cross boundaries between social, cultural, and religious groups. Jew and Gentile, free and slave, those under the law and those outside the law—these were mutually exclusive social categories that in Paul’s day were exhaustive of the human race. A person was either free or slave. A person was either Jew or Gentile. If you weren’t one, you were the other. In his letter to the Galatians, Paul even included the categories of male and female. There he wrote that in Christ “there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

It’s not surprising that Paul’s integrity was questioned. After all, every social sphere has its own governing norms, and sometimes, as we know, the norms can clash. All of us can think of examples from our own lives in which we have felt pulled, even torn, by loyalties to different groups and by commitments to different sets of beliefs and norms. We know how difficult it can be to navigate ourselves through these different loyalties and commitments.

In a recent Huffington Post blog, written soon after the bombings in Boston, Eboo Patel, founder of Interfaith Youth Core, wrote about how intimately most Americans know the experience of having to make sense of multiple loyalties. “In America,” he wrote, “just about everyone is some sort of hyphenated hybrid of race, religion, and ethnicity/nationality. Irish-Catholic-American, African-American Pentecostal, Jewish-American secular humanist, and so on.” Patel goes on to say, “In a nation of hybrids, it’s important to have loyalty to both sides of the hyphen.”

It is true that what usually lies on both sides of a hyphen is loyalty. To be in a hyphenated space, relating to more than one side rather than taking a side, requires a lot of work; it takes integration of norms, beliefs, commitments, and, above all, of loyalties. Though it may be complex, it is not impossible. In fact, if we, like Jesus, take seriously the Great Commandment that Moses taught, we will find that our total loyalty to God alone not only makes possible, but also commands us to be loyal to all.

When asked, “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” quoting Moses, Jesus answered, “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment.” Then he added, “And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” Nowhere else is the loyalty due to others more clearly commanded and connected to the loyalty due to God.

A couple of weeks ago, Jim Wallis was at Fourth Church to speak about his newest book, On God’s Side. In this book, Wallis wants to redirect Christians from claiming that God is on their side to instead being on God’s side. He makes the case that Jesus made: that our loyalty to God is supposed to make us loyal to others, that when we try to be on God’s side, we are supposed to transcend our own side of things. We are supposed to love a group different from our own (Jim Wallis, On God’s Side, p. 9). We are supposed to let others make claims on us.

Given the many different religions and cultures present in our cities today, it would be inappropriate for the church to insist that God’s Great Commandment be publicly posted on all the most important doorposts and public gates of our cities. Perhaps we will find it written, however, over every threshold we cross whenever we place ourselves and our loyalties in hyphenated spaces.