Church & Society Photo
Social Principles Drafting
The Rev. Jacob Dharmaraj (right) works diligently on an exercise to rewrite the United Methodist Social Principles to make them more globally relevant. To his right is Jessie Smith, General Board of Church & Society researcher, who helped facilitate the rewriting process that involved 15 people from around the world.
Last month at the invitation of the General Board of Church & Society, a group set out to look at the United Methodist Social Principles, especially “The Economic Community” and “The Natural World.” Our purpose was to suggest a way to update the Social Principles in keeping with the rapid changes that shape these two key areas.
Our radically altered world today warrants new transformative mission principles that take people, societies, cultures, traditions, histories and worldviews seriously. We want to be able to evaluate these principles in response to revealed biblical truth in order to guide the world to become a new creation.
Dynamic principles for changing times
These changing circumstances call for not just multicultural ways of engaging in mission, but also coming up with new principles of mission that interact between the global and local, intercultural and transcultural, monolingual and polyphonic aspects of today’s world. The core of such interaction should undergird today’s mission and evangelism, proclamation and social justice: a holistic gospel call.
The Social Principles are all about important things in daily life.
The Social Principles are all about important things in daily life. They are about cultivating and sustaining relationship with God and others. They are about justice and mercy, shared resources and interdependence, nurture and hospitality. They are an ongoing process and a lived relationship.
Past mission engagements and previous outreach activities cannot serve as a stable and enduring model. Since social principles, as part of mission principles, are carried out in context specificity, they have to be communicated in meaningful and contemporary language. One particular model or activity cannot be used and pointed out as normative for all time and everywhere, as every community is presented with evolving contexts every day.
A transformative Church
In The United Methodist Church, we are a diverse group of worshipers from every corner of the world. We make up numerous racial, ethnic, national and cultural backgrounds worshiping in many different languages. We represent many regional, annual, jurisdictional, central and general conferences.
The United Methodist Church now stands at a particular defining moment in history. Since the local and global are interconnected, the denomination and its community have to adjust to new contexts of plurality: power-sharing rather than privilege and prestige.
In addition, The United Methodist Church is now in a critical period to help facilitate exchange, and listen to voices from connectional partners who can help develop mission principles that are capable of equipping the denomination for active participation in the Kingdom of God.
The current Social Principles were drafted a little over a generation ago, before the emergence of a hyper-differentiated and hybridized world made possible by globalization, migration and technological advancement.
Hence, we need to map out an “updated” Social Principles to undergird our mission practices; explore the biblical and theological foundations for the shifting contexts of mission. Consequently, the metaphors we use, stories we tell have to make sense and be relevant.
Dynamic tractions and interactions
Language has its inherent limits. Sacred signs and symbols not rooted in the lived experience of a faith community become empty and meaningless.
For instance, a baptismal font is meaningful, if the church celebrates baptism. In a museum, the baptismal font becomes a mere artifact. In a museum, a curator can write and describe what baptism is all about using the baptismal font as a symbol. But a group of young Sunday school children who witness baptism in their own local church has a more lived experience of the ritual of baptism, and are likely to celebrate this ritual.
Contemporary sociologists and linguists argue that all transformation is linguistic. If we have any desire to create a new or an alternative future, we need to have a shift in our language and conversation that we have not had before, one that has the power to create something new in the emerging world. This insight forces us to question the value of our stories, the positions we take, our love of the past, and our way of being in the community in order to create a new context.
It means we go beyond mere change to work for transformation. After all, change fixes the past; transformation creates the future. I am indeed grateful to have been part of a team that started a process to build on the past by striving to update the Social Principles for a better tomorrow.
The Rev. Jacob Dharmaraj is president of the National Federation of Asian American United Methodists, whose membership comprises persons from 10 Asian sub-ethnic caucuses. He is pastor of Shrub Oak (N.Y.) United Methodist Church. This article is reprinted with permission from the General Board of Church and Society.
Another view of the process is available at "Re-envisioning the Social Principles."