Environmental Stewardship and the Gospel of the Kingdom

This blog highlights books from Ralph Winter’s Library and compares excerpts to Winter’s own writings on one or more of the themes from his list of twelve “Frontiers of Perspective.” (See the full list at the end of this blog.)

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(6) The Reclaiming of the Gospel of the Kingdom

Barkey, Michael B., ed. 2000. Environmental stewardship in the Judeo-Christian tradition: Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant wisdom on the environment. Washington, DC: Interfaith Council for Environmental Stewardship.

From the Foreword:

The biblical starting point for any discussion of the nature of religious environmental stewardship must begin with the witness of the Book of Genesis: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he create im; male and female he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth’” (Gen. 1:28-28). In our modern times, however, this biblical vision of the relationship between God, man, and nature is muddled by two false views. The one sees the natural world as the source of all value, man as an intruder, and God, if he exists at all, as so immanent in the natural order that he ceases to be distinguishable from it. The other view places man as the source of all values, the natural order as merely instrumental to his aims, and God as often irrelevant.

            Genesis presents a radically different picture of how the world is put together. In this account, God is the source of all values—in truth, he is the source of everything, calling the world into being out of nothing by his powerful word. Man is part of this order essentially and, what is more, by virtue of his created nature, and is placed at the head of creation as its steward. Yet this stewardship can never by arbitrary or anthropocentric, … for this notion implies that man rules creation in God’s stead and must do so according to his divine will (p. vii).

Sections include:
The Cornwall Declaration on Environmental Stewardship

A Comprehensive Torah-Based Approach to the Environment

The Catholic Church and Stewardship of Creation

A Biblical Perspective on Environmental Stewardship

Although Ralph Winter did not often write or speak specifically about environmental issues, his explanation of his sixth “frontier of perspective” shows his disappointment with evangelical believers who have left concerns for creation care, among other vital topics, to the secular world to deal with. He wrote:

Latter day Evangelicals have … made their “Gospel of salvation” a nearly total substitute for the Gospel of the Kingdom. Why is this? Nineteenth century Evangelicals were very socially conscious compared to Evangelicals in 20th century. Sub-Saharan Africa is 80% Christian, but has been described as having a faith that is … a mile wide and one inch deep. Apart from otherworldly assurances the avowedly Christian structures contribute very little to “Thy will be done on earth” as Jesus asked us to pray. [Cross-cultural workers] are not normally trained nor well-equipped to take on the social, commercial, medical, engineering, and political problems of Africa. Neither are the national pastors. This vast array of problems is not part of our Gospel of Salvation even though it is definitely part of the Gospel of the Kingdom. We leave these problems to the “secular world.” In a word, we think of ourselves as survivors not soldiers.

What might Winter have said and written about the Christian’s responsibility for the environment if his time had not been taken with theologizing and mobilizing believers to eradicate disease in demonstration of God’s character? (See www.robertawinterinstitute.org)

Ralph Winter’s 12 “Frontiers of Perspective” represent major shifts in his thinking that “profoundly modified and molded his perception of the mission task”:

(1) Unreached Peoples

(2) The Great Commission and Abraham

(3) From the Unfinished Task to the Finishable Task

(4) Failure with the Large Groups and the Off-setting Trend to “Radical Contextualization”

(5) Reverse Contextualization, the Recontextualization of Our Own Tradition

(6) The Reclaiming of the Gospel of the Kingdom

 (7) Beyond Christianity

(8) A Different Type of Recruitment

(9) A Trojan Horse

(10) Needed: a Revolution in Pastoral Training

(11) The Religion of Science

(12) The Challenge of the Evil One

Disease and the Challenge of the Evil One

This blog highlights books from Ralph Winter’s Library and compares excerpts to Winter’s own writings on one or more of the themes from his list of twelve “Frontiers of Perspective.” (See the full list at the end of this blog.)

…

 (12) The Challenge of the Evil One

Felton, Ralph A. 1955. Hope rises from the land. New York: Friendship Press.

Excerpts from the chapter, “The Devil under a Microscope,” p. 27, could easily have been part of Ralph Winter's thinking in the 1950s, long before he founded the Roberta Winter Institute (www.robertawinterinstitute.org).

They come from many miles to see the devil. Even African pastors, deacons, and deaconesses come to the laboratory of Alice Strangway to see for themselves real ovilulu (evil spirits).

            Many Africans believe that devils or evil spirits bring their diseases.

            “This one is the bacillus of tuberculosis,” explains Mrs. Strangway. “This disease abounds and is spreading rapidly, due to poor sanitation and faulty nutrition.”

            One pastor looks at it a long time. “If we had only known about it,” he sighs.

            Next they watch the moving microfiliaria that causes so much blindness in Angola. How could there be a worse devil!

            “Here are the red and blue stained parasites of malaria.”           

            “Three of my six babies left us because of these,” one mother sighs. She has the same deep sorrow that mothers have in every land.

            What a collection of devils to be seen through one microscope! Rickets, pellagra, anemias, goiter, scurvy, diarrhea, and many more.

            Africa’s native religion is based upon devils. Witchcraft is a religion of evil spirits. The witch doctor in every village stays in business to cast out just such evil spirits.

            Many leave this laboratory and return to their villages to spread the lessons they have learned. For them belief in witchcraft is gone forever. They learn how to cast out devils—by the food they eat.

This reminds me of several things Ralph Winter used to talk about. Here’s an excerpt from his talk to the Asian Society of Missiology about the “Twelve Mistakes of the West,” in which he turns the use of the microscope around to be used for observing God’s handiwork:

11. The Mistake of Assuming Science Is a Foe Not a Friend

When I was a young person missionaries were showing science films 2,000 times per day in the Non-Western world. The Moody Institute of Science films were shown even more widely in America. Many times in history Christian scholars have recognized that God has revealed Himself in “Two Books,” the Book of Nature and the Book of Scripture. As Psalm 19 indicates, the Book of Nature does not even need to be translated into the world’s languages. Every missionary must take with him to the mission field both a microscope and a telescope if we are to properly glorify God. Even more important is the need to take to the field a true reverence for the glory of God in Creation. This requires a substantial knowledge of nature. Science is the study of God’s creativity. Art is the study of man’s creativity. We cannot truly expect educated people to accept Christ if our hymns in church reflect no awareness of anything discovered in nature in the last 400 years, or if our young people are being led astray by recent and superficial theories that the world is only 6,000 years old. That is an improper reading of Genesis 1:1, as well as a reckless ignoring of thousands of honest Evangelicals who are outstanding scientists.

In a document of compiled quotes from Ralph Winter, describing the purposes of the Roberta Winter Institute, he acknowledged that not everything in this world is the way God designed it to be. “The Intelligent Design people don’t take into account that they are attributing the creation of evil to God." …

At this point it is time to ask the question why it is that the mounting muscle of the very considerable movement of all those globally who are moved by Jesus Christ has not weighed in either theologically or practically in the area of working to correct distortions of nature and of God’s will by going to the roots of the problem. …

Surprising recent insights show that many diseases are basically caused by outside invaders which we need to fight in the same sense as we fight the crime of visible terrorists. Does nutrition, exercise, banishing anxiety, etc. protect you or cure you of Malaria? Are our immune systems normally capable of defeating Malaria, Tuberculosis, Smallpox, Anthrax, etc.? No, not normally. And, if the latest thinking is correct slow-acting viruses underlie heart disease as well as cancer, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s, and Schizophrenia. So, do we go on just praying in addition to making sure we heed these other things (nutrition, exercise, peace of soul and mind, etc.)? It is understandable, of course, that we would not automatically think about going beyond prayer and taking concrete measures to quell the source of these destructive diseases if we did not know that they are caused by attacking pathogens which our immune systems, no matter how healthy, cannot always overcome.

Ralph Winter’s 12 “Frontiers of Perspective” represent major shifts in his thinking that “profoundly modified and molded his perception of the mission task”:

(1) Unreached Peoples

(2) The Great Commission and Abraham

(3) From the Unfinished Task to the Finishable Task

(4) Failure with the Large Groups and the Off-setting Trend to “Radical Contextualization”

(5) Reverse Contextualization, the Recontextualization of Our Own Tradition

(6) The Reclaiming of the Gospel of the Kingdom

(7) Beyond Christianity

(8) A Different Type of Recruitment

(9) A Trojan Horse

(10) Needed: a Revolution in Pastoral Training

(11) The Religion of Science

(12) The Challenge of the Evil One

Environment and the Kingdom

This blog highlights books from Ralph Winter’s Library and compares excerpts to Winter’s own writings on one or more of the themes from his list of twelve “Frontiers of Perspective.” (See the full list at the end of this blog.)

…

(6) The Reclaiming of the Gospel of the Kingdom

Sinclair, Maurice. 1980. Green finger of God. Exeter: Paternoster Press.

Foreword by Samuel Escobar; includes practical stories from Latin America interwoven in the chapters.

Chapter Titles:

Does God Believe in Development?
   The effects of the fall. The Gospel and development. A biblical corrective.

Educational Development

Economic Development

Community Development

Medicine and Development

Politics and Development

The Role of the Church in Development

Gremillion, Joseph. 1978. Food/energy and the major faiths. Maryknoll: Orbis.

From the Foreword:
Thirty-five participants were present for the first Interreligious Peace Colloquim held in Bellagio, Italy, May 1975. The majority were religious leaders from the five world faiths—Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, Muslims, Christians. … Our purpose was to help believers of these five faiths, so often in conflict, to work together on issues affecting the fate of the whole human family—above all to work for peace. The food/energy crisis challenges peace and justice and human rights—for what right takes precedence over the right to eat? It raises questions about the value of life, social ethics, and the meaning of the human person that are so basic that they call upon faith for adequate response.

Division Titles:

The Facts of the Food/Energy Crisis

Impact of the Crisis on World Peace and Social Justice

The Role of Religion in Politics and Society

Strategies for Meeting the Food/Energy Crisis

Some of Ralph Winter’s thinking that relates to concern for world food and environment issues.

From his elaboration on the 6^th of his 12 “Frontiers of Perspective”:

It may today be the distinctive heresy of the Evangelical that we have become specialists in merely getting people happy and getting them into heaven. … The Bible does not talk so much about how to get people into heaven as about how to get heaven into people.

Latter day Evangelicals have … made their “Gospel of salvation” a nearly total substitute for the Gospel of the Kingdom. Why is this? Nineteenth century Evangelicals were very socially conscious compared to Evangelicals in 20th century. … Christian structures contribute very little to “Thy will be done on earth” as Jesus asked us to pray. Missionaries are not normally trained nor well-equipped to take on the social, commercial, medical, engineering, and political problems of Africa. Neither are the national pastors. This vast array of problems is not part of our Gospel of Salvation even though it is definitely part of the Gospel of the Kingdom. We leave these problems to the “secular world.” In a word, we think of ourselves as survivors not soldiers.

From the 2006 FMF Principles Members Manual:

Another example, in view of our “international development” approach to mission, is that we seek the goal of effective land use and thus decry the excessive use of land for the production of animal protein. We feel strongly that in the Western world, and in the U.S. in particular, animal protein is commonly used in excess and not only tears down health, but diverts a huge percentage of land that would otherwise be available for the cultivation of more efficient foods. (The corn grown on a given tract of land will feed ten times as many people as it will if fed first to cattle which are then eaten as meat. The people of India could not support their population if India were not mainly vegetarian!).

From an electronic document in Ralph Winter's files:

 In Ralph Winter’s electronic files I discovered a sermon by Greg Boyd, “A War-torn Creation,” that I later included as a chapter in a book I edited with Scott Moreau, Evangelical and Frontier Perspectives on the Global Progress of the Gospel, available from William Carey Library: http://missionbooks.org/williamcareylibrary/product.php?productid=717&cat=0&page=1ngelical and Frontier Perspectives on the Global Progress of the Gospel.

A few excerpts:

“Creation is permeated with spiritual warfare. It’s not just human beings who are sort of the plane of spiritual warfare, but creation itself has been corrupted. … Colossians chapter 1: it says that “God was pleased to have all of his fullness dwell in Christ, and through him to reconcile to himself all things whether things on earth or things in heaven by making peace through his blood shed on the cross.”

Know that you are doing spiritual warfare whenever you fight the evil effects of nature. You are reclaiming nature, you are rebuking the curse. We are doing spiritual warfare when we fight disease. Not just when we pray, anything you do to push back the harmful effects of nature. When you fund famine relief, you are doing spiritual warfare. When you support organizations that help people that are suffering from a drought you are doing spiritual warfare. When you go to build wells in villages you are doing spiritual warfare. When you teach people better farming and irrigation skills, you are doing spiritual warfare. When scientists do scientific engineering to develop crops for people they are doing spiritual warfare. When they investigate new ways to sanitize water, they are doing spiritual warfare. When they discover ways to fight diseases, that is spiritual warfare. Anything you do to fight poverty and hunger is spiritual warfare. In fact, having mercy on animals is a form of spiritual warfare. Anything you do to reflect God’s ideal for creation is a form of spiritual warfare. In fact, everything you do positive for the earth is a form of spiritual warfare. 

Ralph Winter’s 12 “Frontiers of Perspective” represent major shifts in his thinking that “profoundly modified and molded his perception of the mission task”:

(1) Unreached Peoples

(2) The Great Commission and Abraham

(3) From the Unfinished Task to the Finishable Task

(4) Failure with the Large Groups and the Off-setting Trend to “Radical Contextualization”

(5) Reverse Contextualization, the Recontextualization of Our Own Tradition

(6) The Reclaiming of the Gospel of the Kingdom

(7) Beyond Christianity

(8) A Different Type of Recruitment

(9) A Trojan Horse

(10) Needed: a Revolution in Pastoral Training

(11) The Religion of Science

(12) The Challenge of the Evil One

The Challenge of the Evil One

This blog highlights books from Ralph Winter’s Library and compares excerpts to Winter’s own writings on one or more of the themes from his list of twelve “Frontiers of Perspective.” (See the full list at the end of this blog.)

…

(12) The Challenge of the Evil One

As I’m sorting the books in Ralph Winter’s library, I’m putting little red dots on the books that relate to the Roberta Winter Institute (www.robertawinterinstitute.org). Here’s a key book I read during my mountain retreat time with my family this week:

Lewis, Edwin. 1948. The Creator and the Adversary. New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury.

A chapter entitled, “The Challenge to Mortal Combat,” contains Lewis’ interpretation of what it means to pray and act that “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” He describes “a speaker who called upon the American people to cease believing in God because seventeen million persons now living would die of cancer.” But Lewis offers an alternative for those who know that if God’s will is frustrated by the death of a cancer sufferer, there is “still a will of God [the Creator] that the fight against evil [the Adversary] shall be continued.” Instead of ceasing to believe in God, or the goodness of God, Lewis challenged that that speaker “would have made a much better and a much wiser use of his time had he called upon the American people to join with God in the fight against cancer” (pp. 149-50).

This is exactly how Ralph Winter viewed the damage being done to God’s reputation. Winter didn’t see Lewis’ book until 2005 (after I quoted the section above in a paper I wrote for my doctoral studies), but Winter had already written in 2002, “To destroy the works of the devil is one major way in which our testimony of word and deed can glorify the true nature of our living God, our heavenly father. It is not an alternative to evangelism, it will make our evangelism more credible. It is to rectify our God’s damaged reputation. It is to avoid extending the implicit and embarrassing policy of almost constantly misrepresenting Him in our mission work around the world. Attacking the roots of disease is part and parcel of our basic mandate to glorify God in all the earth.”

Ralph Winter’s 12 “Frontiers of Perspective” represent major shifts in his thinking that “profoundly modified and molded his perception of the mission task”:

(1) Unreached Peoples

(2) The Great Commission and Abraham

(3) From the Unfinished Task to the Finishable Task

(4) Failure with the Large Groups and the Off-setting Trend to “Radical Contextualization”

(5) Reverse Contextualization, the Recontextualization of Our Own Tradition

(6) The Reclaiming of the Gospel of the Kingdom

(7) Beyond Christianity

(8) A Different Type of Recruitment

(9) A Trojan Horse

(10) Needed: a Revolution in Pastoral Training

(11) The Religion of Science

(12) The Challenge of the Evil One