When I served as a pastor, I often had a tough time with my leaders in the Brethren in Christ Church — not because we did not love each other, but because I groaned under their direction. Granted, I was theological friends with Christians like bell hooks who were preaching an ethic of love and I pondered making friends with Buddhists. What’s more, I was rather vocal about the antichrist ethics of capitalism and attempts by the U.S. to dominate the world militarily and economically. So I made them groan a bit, too — I think they thought I was very liberal.
I, on the other hand, regularly told them, when I got the chance, that I thought they were the ones who were very “liberal,” in that they readily adopted post-Enlightenment philosophies as the basis for their theology. Even though they were supposedly rooted in antiestablishment Anabaptism, they relentlessly “left the farm” (as they liked to say), to more effectively compete in the present “marketplace” of ideas. They succeeded, to an extent, in growing churches filled with enculturated Christians.
My disappointment with the BIC, by whom I am ordained and licensed, was activated again when one of my spiritual direction clients brought up their personal “values.” I was literally triggered by the term and maybe went just a little beyond the bounds of my usual restraint. Let it suffice to say my appreciation for my companion was too great to let them stay subject to a word that has infiltrated the church and undercut our faith for over 140 years, now.
BIC Values
The subject of values was a main point of dispute for me with my leaders. I did not organize any marches, but I am sure I spoke up much more than they preferred.
In the year 2000 a General Conference of the Brethren in Christ adopted a new identity statement enumerating our “values.” That word may be the least Anabaptist, Pietist or Wesleyan one they could have chosen to describe our basic beliefs. I would have preferred “distinctives” or “aspirations” or “convictions.” Instead we got the straight business-plan title “Core Values” without too much thought as to why. (They are still being used). I assume they thought my critique was “urban.”
Each statement is fine, even if they do have the tortured sound of being committee compromises. But by calling them “values” they undermined my attempts to introduce radical Christianity to people who had lost it or never had it. The prospective Jesus followers I met already had “values.” But they had lost “virtue” or any sense of transcendent “morality.”
The word “values” got a new definition
When I was in college, I often saw students carrying around a big fat paperback of Friedrich Nietzsche philosophy. He is the father of the modern, abstract use of the word “values,” in the sense of moral or social principles. His thinking was popularized in the early 20th century by sociologists and anthropologists, notably Max Weber.
Nietzsche was a pioneer in undermining the traditional Christian thinking that dominated Europe. He was definitely thinking outside the box. Before he went officially “mad,” probably due to the same kind of brain disorder that affected his father and brother, he famously wrote of the “transvaluation of all values” (Umwertung aller Werte). That meant he was cheering along the process of revaluing what was valuable. He was the man who said “God is dead,” meaning that in the modern era, belief in God and the accompanying Christian morality had lost its power and influence in society, leading to a moral vacuum humanity would have to fill.
He challenged traditional classical and Judeo-Christian virtues and asserted these moral standards were human-created rather than transcendent truths. It was in the 1880s that Nietzsche began to speak of “values” in the way we now use the word to talk about the moral assumptions and attitudes of a given society. He used the word consciously and repeatedly, to demonstrate the momentous transition human history had made. He thought describing the “transvaluation of values” was revealing the revolution which was underway, a revolution against both the classical virtues and the Judaic-Christian ones – against the very idea of a transcendent morality.
Others developing value theory (“axiology” after the Greek word for “worthy” or “deserving”) immediately pushed back, arguing for the objective existence of values, independent of human desires. But by the time Theodore Roosevelt used the word in the early 1900’s, it is well on its way to describing relativized beliefs that are socially constructed. The beliefs of the world were moving toward what we have today where, as Nietzsche noted, the powerful often have and impose values which normal, weak people do not come up with on their own. The transcendent morality revealed in Jesus was replaced by the survival of the fittest ideas. Now Donald Trump is a value unto himself and, even among the poor, the enrichment of oligarchs is of utmost importance, as they say it should be, even as they attempt to recreate the world in their image.
What we “value” could be deadly
Who would have thought the Brethren in Christ would become the handmaidens of Nietzsche?
Values, as we now understand that word, do not have to be virtues; they can be personally-sourced beliefs, opinions, attitudes, feelings, habits, preferences –- whatever any individual, group, or society happens to value, at any time, for any reason. One cannot say of virtues, as one can of values, that anyone’s virtues are as good as anyone else’s, or that everyone has a right to their own virtues. Only values can claim such moral equality and neutrality. This impartial, “non-judgmental” (as we now say) sense of values –- values as “value-free”–- is now so firmly entrenched in our vocabulary and sensibility that one can hardly imagine a time without it.
My issue with the use of “core values” to describe our discipleship had quite a bit of Teddy Roosevelt pragmatism in it. I still think most Christians in the U.S. are heavy on principle and light on action. Their faith is proving unsustainable as we speak. That’s why I like bell hooks’ ethic of love so much — it is all about how you live, not just what you think or believe.
It is hard to see belief systems in the New Testament at all; the writings are all about creating something by the power of the Holy Spirit; they are more about following Jesus than worshipping him at a distance, if we choose to do so. It is ironic that the powerless of the world regularly claim their freedom by not “drinking the kool-aid” of anyone imposing some principle on them when that very act shows how they “drank the kool-aid” of reducing themselves down to a set of personal values. All the while they could have been following Jesus who actually is a law unto himself, and who faced his detractors, imprisoned in their sense of worth, with “You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world. I told you that you would die in your sins; if you do not believe that I am he, you will indeed die in your sins.”
What if I don’t value billionaires?
The people I have served were much more moved by the valuation of the “invisible hand” than the conviction of the Holy Spirit. What most people value these days is almost totally subsumed under making a good deal. My cousins asked me at most Thanksgiving dinners, “How is the church business going? Is your church getting bigger?” Advice columnists ask, “Are you better off with him or without him?” Put that last phrase into AI and it says, “Ultimately, the decision is personal and should prioritize your own happiness and well-being.” That is about all we’ve got these days: what I value, more or less.
Our government is littered with big hands grasping at a diminishing public trough. What if I don’t believe they are really job creators? What if I don’t value the way they assign my value? What if Jesus, the great I AM, makes me who I am?
Ellen Meiksins Wood observed, that a capitalist society is a society in which social relations are “embedded in the economy” rather than the “economy being embedded in social relations.” What she meant is we cannot account for the complexity of the capitalist mode of production as if it were an expression of human motives, desires and values. Capitalism is not simply an expression of the human tendency to “truck, barter and exchange.” Now it is a power that compels us to govern our whole lives in a transactional and commodifying way. It is not merely a matter of free people making choices, it is a compulsion, so much so, that a popular slur by our rulers is calling someone a “socialist.”
Under capitalism, many other aspects of human nature — such as the need for love, solidarity, and individuality — are secondary to the values associated with profit-seeking, or, if being kind, with “personal satisfaction” or “self-realization.” The word “values” is loaded with monetary value, quid pro quo, even with an evaluation of empathy as too weak to be sustainable.
I think the word “values” is loaded with the worst kind of autonomy: Godless, loveless, aloneness. The thoughts that: “I am responsible for what is important,” “I assign worth,” “My everyday choices to consume one thing over another is what gives me an identity” are overwhelming and subjugating. Thus the BIC reduced themselves with their “core values” to another set of choices, a product. It did not set itself apart from the world, it willingly adapted itself to the principles of the world.
But let’s remember after all this: Jesus is greater than our core values. There were undoubtedly many people in the crowd he confronted in John 8 who did not hear him and just “write him off“ with, “You have a right to your own opinion.” They followed him. The BIC is full of those kind of people, too.
Everyone tensely watches from the dam, afraid their huge, wild experiment will be a bust. But right when they are ready to give up, one salmon leaps out of the water. Soon all of them are turning around and getting up the ladder and up the stream. Excitement ensues.
