[Originally published in the Lutheran Forum in 2007. Can't believe I've been working this beat for over a decade and we're now where we are... but we are where we are. I'd probably write this differently if I were writing it today (less academic, less 'Lutheran-y', but I've decided to re-post it given the tenor of our national conversation on immigration.]
Radical Baptism
Bearing the name of Christ through baptism creates a new community that transcends traditional boundaries, especially nationalist ones. The modern nation state has done a superb job of convincing peoples the world over that citizenship is definitive of personhood. Witness the fact that the New York Times can run an article on “stateless” peoples, children born in foreign nations to undocumented immigrants who therefore have no true citizenship, nor can reliably ever expect to have such, short of the miracle of being processed by the international United Nations refugee assistance program. In the kingdom on the left, citizenship is everything, passports and identity cards are the mark of the state, and promise most of the protections and provisions of that state.
Exploding the myth of nationality as constitutive of personal identity is one of the goals of this essay. Stated otherwise, the goal of this essay is to proclaim the Christian myth of baptism as creation of a new self in Christ. Christians proclaim, and are reminded of especially in a post-Christendom context, that it is our baptism that makes us who we are, the body of Christ. Maxwell Johnson writes, “Baptism places into the world a community of displaced people, people on a pilgrimage who really belong nowhere except where they are led, a people sure of their identity as the Body of Christ, as those who always walk wet in the baptismal waters of their origin” (Rites, 365-366). It is patently the case that Christians have not boldly lived out this baptismal identity. In common conversation and usage, we state our nationality before we state our baptismal status. We are only secondarily baptized Christians, and it is the first definition (national) that most often claims our priorities and commitments and rules our imagination.
The point needs to be made clearly and strongly. So: national boundaries forcibly divide what is indivisible according to Christian theology, namely the body of Christ. The baptized on both sides of the border of any nation state should have as their primary allegiance, and have as their new border, the body of Christ into which they have been baptized. It is quite clear that much of the violence in the world, a violence that non-violent Christian community can neither condone nor be complicit in, results from the maintenance of these borders, which are the very force of death. William Cavanaugh writes, “The ancient martyrs often asserted the kingship of Christ in refusing to offer worship or service to the emperors and their gods. The church was, by its nature as Christ’s crucified and resurrected body, a challenge to the violence and idolatry of the secular authorities… the conflict is between Christ’s body on earth and the powers of the world which refuse to recognize Christ’s victory over it. Christians see acts of injustice and state violence as the continuing struggle between the people of God and the forces of death.”
A pilgrim people, “sure of their identity as the body of Christ,” would not by and large be concerned about such things as “porous borders.” Secured on the rock of baptism, drowned into the one foundation of Jesus Christ as Lord, they would live on the way because they follow and are “the Way”. As the obvious counter-example, most modern nation states are concerned about overly porous borders. They define persons by place of birth, by nationality, and so attempt to circumscribe personhood by reference to nation. This is their power over persons- trying to tell us who we are. Permeable borders therefore by definition weaken the state because they commingle persons the state wishes to define and exclude (or retain), and so challenge the nation’s defining power over persons. Although some nation states continue attempts to re-assert their power (defining persons as alien, illegal) and often do so through legitimate means (nationalizing, granting citizenship), nevertheless, a border either in reality or by citizenal definition, remains.
The Christian community, by contrast, because it’s life springs from the waters of baptism, calls the world to live as it does, with complete fluidity as we suffer and undergo God’s permeability. A fundamental doctrine of the church, ecumenically (and universally?) recognized, is that of “one baptism” (Ephesians). Although individual congregations may provide orientation or educational opportunities for new members who come from other communions, by definition a baptized person is a member of Christ’s church and so all congregations; most churches recognize one anothers’ baptisms, and it is baptism in the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that defines that person as new creation in Christ. As fundamental to Paul’s gospel logic as “one baptism” is his “there is no longer Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for all are one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians).
Can the world, and institutions within it, actually live into this pilgrim one-ness? Traditional Lutheran theology, for example, found it necessary to make a distinction between two kingdoms, the kingdom on the left and on the right. This distinction was helpful in a Christendom context where it was necessary to have a theory of governmental rule (left) differentiated in some ways from a theory of God’s rule (right). It further helped because it allowed for a differentiation between values guiding the self and theories of just governmental rule. But the imagination intrinsic to such a distinction was guided primarily by a realpolitikrather than the sacramental imagination intrinsic to the life of the community of Christ. Two kingdoms is certainly true in a descriptive sense; it is my intention to call into question two kingdoms in its prescriptive forms. We all live mostly as if there were two kingdoms (although it could be argued that we mostly live as if there were only one kingdom, the kingdom on the left; Niebuhr was quite right to label much of our life together practical atheism). God’s kingdom as a reality in the world, a new creation already eschatologically accomplished prior to the end because Jesus as already come among us, is seldom embodied among us.
Take this obvious example: Can a baptized Christian fight in a war against another nation and kill another baptized Christian? Two kingdoms theology provided a place for such, taking into account certain “just war” considerations. But “pilgrim people” theology imagines an alternative, that these two soldiers, though of different nationalities, are still “one in Christ”, and just so thatis the primary claim on their lives, and their lifetaking. To kill a brother or sister in Christ is to maim and divide the one body, an action fundamentally opposed to the ethic of the gospel.
Just so most national defense is not a Christian ethic, but a pagan one, and the Christian witness, the life of the baptized, is one of permeable and hospitable borders. It is in fact even more radical than that. It imagines one body in many places, and therefore hospitality and lack of defensiveness precisely in order to receive and live into that one body. In this sense, stringent national defense strategies and anti-immigration policies amount to the same thing. Both lack the imagination intrinsic to a baptismal spirituality, which sees a nation or kingdom being formed in each and every place because the baptized live in these places.
“Baptizenship” therefore recites the creed, not the pledge, and has as its symbol of unity a table rather than the flag. Christians, maybe especially in the United States, have been far too complicit in allowing (even maintaining) an idolatrous pledge and Asherah-like flag as central symbols of faith and comfort. Which of these two concepts primarily informs the average U.S. Christians’ ethics--patriotism or table fellowship? Although some might pay lip service to the latter over the former, in point of fact, table fellowship loses each time, because we have not advocated loudly for any and all of the baptized, of whatever place, to be welcome at our tables. How would they get to our tables? If they are languishing in a refugee camp, has our ethic of table fellowship led us to advocate for their quick processing and granting of refugee status? If they are undocumented immigrants, do they know our tables are safe and welcoming, or are they at risk of Christians being patriotically complicit in a system that would have us sending fellow baptized Christians through the penal system back to their “homeland.” Do the emotions that rise up around these issues give lie to our commitments? Obviously they do.
What I am calling for first of all is for us to simply imagine the possibility that baptism actually means something now, in the present, existentially, socially, bodily. Let’s at least imaginethat God’s Word is the source and norm of our life together, the first and the last word, the primary word, and that all other words (say systems of government, pagan practices of sovereignty, claims on personal identity, etc.) take second place to this first normative word. To play with the two kingdoms terminology, they are the kingdom that is “left” after the “right”-full kingdom has been lived and imagined in the way of its King. And this imagination has first claim on those of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus, have been baptized into his death, are dead to sin, and alive to God in Christ Jesus (Romans 6).
Then, as a pilgrim people, we might suffer at the hands of nation states or people groups who do not confess the same creed. We would suffer from living our baptism. At least then we would be suffering for the sake of the gospel, rather than forcing other Christians to suffer for the sake of our commitments to the flag, the nation, and the ethic of this world. The great tragedy in all of this is that we have become so comfortable with being powerful that we simply cannot imagine that Christ when he says, “Whoever is persecuted in my name [or for righteousness’ sake],” actually means what he says. And what he first means is that we will need to stop calling for others to suffer so we can maintain our own comfort and security. Seriously, in this era, does the nation-state need the church’s (our) patriotic mis-guided protections? Isn’t the Christian witness, “go and be martyrion,” much more at risk?
Beyond Baptism
“The church has an unconditional obligation to the victims of any ordering of society, even if they do not belong to the Christian community” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, quoted in Marilynne Robinson’s The Death of Adam, page 113).
Although the Christian community’s imagination is first of all informed by its standing as God’s baptized people, the church has generally understood that the implications of this acceptance (gift) of God are for all people, not just those already included. The danger in our presentation now is that baptism could surreptitiously function as the new border, a kind-of sacramental we/they dichotomizer. Returning to the pointed ethical question: Can a baptized Christian kill a non-Christian in war? Or as regards immigrants and refugees: Should non-Christian immigrants and refugees receive different treatment at the hands of Christians than the baptized? Does the theology of baptism imply that Christians only have concern for others who are baptized, or is their something intrinsic to baptism that propels itself out and away?
The joint ministry of the Lutheran denominations, as well as the ministry of Catholic Relief Service, Jewish Relief Service, and other refugee services, answers this question in their actual practice. They help relocated refugees of any and all religious traditions. They do not discriminate. They do this because they agree with Bonhoeffer that “the church has an unconditional obligation to the victims of the ordering of any society, even if they do not belong to the Christian community.” So, we might say that baptism as a sacrament is gospel precisely in its openness. Not only does it include all those baptized and therefore transcend things that might otherwise divide; it also refuses to divide based on its own internal logic. It embraces those not yet baptized and cares for them. It is a missiological sacrament, the practice of those sent out to all nations (Matthew 28). Since it is the practice and public sign of the sent pilgrim people, it transforms now how the church relates to those to whom they are sent precisely because of what is implicit in it as sacrament.
Baptism furthermore does not function as a new “border” or we/they dichotomizer because the baptized are already de-centered by the “I AM” who names them. As a de-centered “we”, the baptized no longer make distinctions between us and them in the way the world might. Instead, the church lives by what we might term a “realizing eschatology.” A realizing eschatology is coming to the realization that the end has already come in Christ, and so those who are coming to realize this enjoy a kind of freedom vis-à-vis this realization. James Alison tells a wonderful parable that describes his realizing eschatology better than any rational argument:
Please go back in your memory to 1989. Now please imagine that you are in Albania. November comes along, and through the ether comes news that many miles to the north, in Berlin, the wall has come down. You know exactly what this means: it means that it’s all over, the beast which ran your lives is mortally wounded, has lost its transcendence, is dead. It’s all over bar the shouting It may take some time for the thrashing about of the beast in its death throes to calm down. It may take some time for the effects of that to trickle down through Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, but fundamentally it’s over. You and some friends begin quietly to dance and celebrate in Albania. The very fact that you are dancing and celebrating is itself not only a sign that the beast has lost its transcendence, but is something which is, itself, helping the loss of transcendence, because you can have a party in its face. Something has been undone, somewhere else, and this means that you don’t need to undo it yourself, the rejoicing in its being already done is part of what universalizes the undoing so that you do find yourself participating in the undoing, but as a recipient who is spreading the effect.. Some people, of course, do not accept that the coming down of the wall means that the beast is dead. They want to say: no, that’s a temporary blip, and we’re in charge here. So they turn up grunting and shouting and bullying to try and make it look as though nothing has changed. But it has, and even they are losing faith in the old order. Part of the celebration may be learning to help the apparatchiks of the old order discover themselves a place in the new one Giving them a soft landing: something the old order, built on revenge and triumph over enemies, couldn’t possibly understand. While they’re around, of course, your celebration will look like, and be made to look like, dancing in the face of the evidence. And that is what True Worship implies: the beginning of the celebration of a new regime even while the old regime hasn’t yet grasped the news of its own fall (Undergoing God, Continuum 2006, 40-41)
Certainly Jesus was one who was dancing in the face of the evidence. Inasmuch as the church has lived like Christ and with Christ, it has danced this way also. This is to say that because baptism is what it is, death and resurrection into the life of Christ, it brings with it the whole burden and blessing of Christlikeness—suffering and witnessing for the “others”, precisely because in Christ there is no longer other, but only neighbors who are already eschatologically “we.” And this non-othered ordering and neighborliness includes even those who wish to maintain the old order.
So far this essay has contained enough radical assertions to keep the close reader busy with questions and critiques for some time. I have purposely asserted the issues in as direct and pointed a way as possible, precisely to bring the issue to life in our imaginations. I am aware that much needs to follow in the way of appropriation and reflection (although I also wonder if most further work I would do on the issue might seek to tame the beast). One way forward is to enter into conversation with an alternative “real” eschatology, informed by a more traditional law/gospel distinction.
Exemplary theologian Gerharde Forde is one who maintains that there is an end before the end (a “real” as compared to Alison’s “realizing” eschatology), and on the basis of law/gospel distinctions proclaims a paradoxical already/not yet. He writes, “Precisely because faith sees that Christ alone is the end of the law, that law correlates with sin and death and cannot be removed by our theologies, law is established this side of the eschaton” (The Preached God, 219); or later similarly, “…there is no cure other than a more radical proclamation of Christ as the end of the law who because he is the end establishes the law prior to the end” (224).
Many of the documents and ministries of the current church assume some form of this understanding of the law and its continuation. For example, a Lutheran joint statement on immigration reform reads: “We recognize and affirm the responsibility of the government to regulate immigration in a godly manner while considering the many factors that deserve careful attention.” This is a clear and concise articulation of the two kingdoms doctrine, at least in its traditional formulation.
As another example, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, a Lutheran organization involved in ongoing work resettling refugees in the United States and advocating for refugees and immigrants, has worked out a clear and helpful policy statement on comprehensive immigration reform. They write:
LIRS and its member organizations believe that “In difficult and threatening times, churches and all Christians have an obligation to stand with the word of God against those who use fear to deny fundamental human rights and dignity to the stranger in our midst.”LIRS continues to advocate for reform of our broken immigration system, working with our partners, who include immigrant, business, labor, faith-based and human rights groups. To meet the needs of migrants and of our communities, meaningful reform must be based on the following four principles:
· Uniting families
· Protecting human rights and worker rights
· Ending the marginalization of the undocumented, making it possible for them to live openly in our society
· Giving immigrants willing to contribute to our economy and society a path toward permanence.”
While recognizing that the system is broken, LIRS works within and through the current legal system, calling for reform of the laws themselves. They “recognize and affirm the responsibility to regulate immigration in a godly manner,” and then clarify their understanding of the “godly manner” through four principles.
All of these are worthy commitments. I notice, however, that the four principles are informed by concepts of “rights,” “family values,” “non-marginalization,” and “contribution.” These are important concepts in our political landscape, and they have considerable traction. What is missing (probably not unusual for a public document from LIRS or any other non-profit of its kind) is the language of baptism and sacrament in the radical sense articulated in the first portion of this essay.
Nevertheless, the baptismal imagination does seem to inform further comments in the document regarding differing House and Senate Comprehensive Immigration Reform legislation. LIRS opposes legislation that criminalizes undocumented workers. It especially opposes legislation that criminalizes ministry with undocumented migrants. Their recommendations are especially geared towards providing a path to permanence, avoiding long-term or unjust detention, and protecting the least and the vulnerable- unaccompanied minors, asylum seekers, torture survivors, and fractured families. Here I am reminded once again of Bonhoeffer’s confession: “The church has an unconditional obligation to the victims of any ordering of society, even if they do not belong to the Christian community.”
The public statement of Bishop Stephen Bouman, Metropolitan New York Synod, is another example that, although not naming baptism directly, certainly radicalizes the issue in relation to Scriptural mandates: “God calls us to welcome, protect, and love everyone in our midst. Our love for the stranger must transcend national boundaries, race, language, culture, and religion.” Bouman proclaims this in relation to immigration abuses in our nation, especially out-of-control detention of undocumented immigrants, many of whom are children or young women with families. No mention is made of baptism per se- instead, in this press-release, the emphasis is on the biblical mandate to welcome the stranger. Statements from Lutheran leaders like Bouman help illustrate a necessary next step- to relate the doctrine of baptism to the biblical mandate to welcome the stranger and care for the sojourner in our midst (Leviticus 19:33-34; Matthew 25).Statements like Bouman’s also exercise us in imagining a “realizing” eschatology pushing at the edges of current ministries of the church and affiliated organizations.
Heaven is Wet
The Church is the collective living out of the opening of heaven.
All the way to heaven is heaven, because He said, “I am the way.”
Church imagines citizenship differently because the Christian imagination is essentially eschatological. The church is not a rival polis, but points to another time and place, the new heaven and new earth. The church may appear to be a rival polis, may even articulate a vision of the life of the baptized, translated for the sake of the whole world, that sounds “as if” it rivals other polises; it is nevertheless a vision, and is non-exclusive in its exclusive claims. It is a way, the “collective living out of the opening of heaven.” Inasmuch as it is the way of Jesus, the Son of God, it is heaven, for heaven is God and life in God.
Although this can be articulated eschatologically, it also has a point of reference in the public witness of the crucified Christ. Christ, as the holy one of Israel, in his torn open and crucified body, is crucified “in the air,”as a public sign of the end of one rule and the non-violent proclamation of a new one. Our incorporation into this crucifixion is how Paul, for example, makes sense of our new life in Christ. Because we are drowned in baptism and raised with Christ, our new life in Christ takes the form of this crucified openness. A number of boundaries take on new conceptuality. We are “adopted” (adoption serving as a fruitful metaphor that compares favorably and helpfully with the metaphor of immigration I have been employing in this essay). Jesus says to the beloved disciple, “This is your mother,” and to his mother, “This is your son.” We are just so a new sibling society, brothers and sisters in Christ, and although many may try to distinguish us by what we used to be, we are who we are made, and the heavenliness of this new creation is awash with a new fluid relationality. Immigrants. Refugees. Friends. Brothers. Sisters. Pilgrims. Citizens of heaven. For God has named us in a life-giving flood.
It is specifically in the presence of this public event “in the air,” the crucifixion of Jesus on the cross, that the church discovers who it isThe church is who it is in the presence of this crucified one. Although it may seem an obvious point, it seems frequently lost in the telling. The point is this- the Christian proclamation inherently has a public dimension. It takes place in space and time in front of a watching world. It furthermore creates a community through the proclamation of Jesus crucified. So there is a community of people who are marked by the cross and so live as “resident aliens” or “pilgrim people.” And it is the public life of these people, their life together, that is itself political action and activity before a watching world. That is, this Christian community does not first of all need to make changes in public policy, or change the world through shrewd politicking and advocacy. Rather, the Christian community is called first of all to live differently in and of itself, as the people it is created and sustained in the waters of baptism. Changes in the world will take place inasmuch as the world a) takes note of what the church is doing and how it is living, and b) reacts by working with, or resisting, the public nature of the church’s life. But the church is called to attend first to itself, and not to the hoped for or expected impact.
A wonderful example of this in the history of the church in the United States was the Sanctuary Movement. In the early 1980s, churches of all stripes- Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish—offered refugees from Central American countries social services and advocacy support.. At that time, since many of these countries were officially allies of the United States, the U.S. would have denied many of these refugees asylum, even though many of the refugees had participated in the liberation theology movement, and were indeed in need of asylum. “These congregations, united under the banner of the Sanctuary Movement, also pledged that they would not reveal the identities of these refugees, even if they were arrested or jailed for doing so.” A result of this movement to provide sanctuary (in the real sense of that term) was a change in national foreign policy. But changing foreign was not the movement’s raison d’etre. Rather, it was solidarity with the oppressed, and an imagination informed by the idea that it is our new life in Christ that has primary claim on us.
The New Sanctuary Movement, initiated this past month by Interfaith Worker Justice as a response to concerns for comprehensive immigration reform, has as its most crucial element a repeating of the first Sanctuary Movement’s “prophetic hospitality.” Congregations “host” a family seeking sanctuary for three months and support them throughout that time. In the case of the New Sanctuary Movement, no laws will be broken. But in a tense political and cultural climate, even this kind of hospitality will likely meet inhospitable protests.
Such a movement has deep resonances, even if unnamed, with this proposal for the recovery of a radical baptismal theology. It is a call to the churches to provide sanctuary for people, in many cases Christian people, who live in fear because they have been marked and identified first of all by nationality and race. One can imagine that at least in some of these sanctuaries, now literal rather than figurative, the waters of baptism flow and an echo of a voice is saying, “Child of God, you have been sealed with the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross forever.” And the congregation responds, “The church has an unconditional obligation to the victims of any ordering of society, even if they do not belong to the Christian community.”
According to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience." ( Eph. 2. 2 ) But the Lord came to overthrow the devil and to purify the air and to make "a way" for us up to heaven, as the apostle says, "through the veil, that is to say, His flesh."( Heb. 10. 20 ) This had to be done through death, and by what other kind of death could it be done, save by a death in the air, that is, on the cross? Here, again, you see how right and natural it was that the Lord should suffer thus; for being thus "lifted up," He cleansed the air from all the evil influences of the enemy. "I beheld Satan as lightning falling," ( Luke 10. 18) He says; and thus He re-opened the road to heaven, saying again, "Lift up your gates, 0 ye princes, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors." ( Psalm 24. 7) For it was not the Word Himself Who needed an opening of the gates, He being Lord of all, nor was any of His works closed to their Maker. No, it was we who needed it, we whom He Himself upbore in His own body - that body which He first offered to death on behalf of all, and then made through it a path to heaven (Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word, chapter 4)
