After SVS 2010: Jason Coker, The Begging Bowl, Toward a Kingdom Economy of Gifts, Power, and Justice

After SVS 2010 is an extended dialogue with presenters from the first annual Society of Vineyard Scholars conference, held Feb 11-13, 2010. Monday through Friday until March 26th we’ll profile an SVS presenter and dialogue with them around their paper. Click here for a brief intro and link directory of the series. Full text of papers are available to SVS members.
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Jason Coker: “The Begging Bowl: Toward a Kingdom Economy of Gifts, Power, and Justice”

Abstract
Western Christianity has leaned heavily on the coercive economics of Modern marketplaces in fiscal stewardship and distribution of power, but scripture prefers a gift economy. Paul interprets the manna narrative of Exodus 16 as a gift-economy for producing needs-based equality and establishes it as our normative economic paradigm (2 Cor 8). This gift-economy is demonstrated in Acts, eradicating poverty in the Church (Acts 2 and 4). Paul applies this economics of equality to the distribution of power through “gifts” of the Holy Spirit as well  (Rom 12 and 1 Cor 12). Hence, whether the resources are food, property, or power, the gift-economy of Exodus 16 is applied as the defining economic narrative of the Bible, challenging the Modern doctrine of the autonomous self and leading Christians to embrace the “poverty of the gift” whereby each person risks becoming poor through gift-giving so the group might become wealthy. This is the economy of faith, what Thomas Merton called, “the begging bowl.”

Similar practices are observed in ancient gift cultures through the ethnographic work of Marcel Mauss who showed that alms were a subversive redistribution of resources from those who hoard to those who lack, turning mercy into an expression of God’s just vengeance. Seen through this lens of re-distribution and mercy-vengeance, Christ’s incarnation and crucifixion are an act of subversive gift-power whereby he became poor so that we might become rich (2 Cor 8:7), conquering all through the gift of mercy-vengeance. Moreover, being “in Christ” re-locates the boundaries of the self beyond the the individualized body and into the sphere of Kingdom relationships grounded in Christ (Gal 2:19-20). This new Kingdom self can reciprocate gift-power through the transcendence of Christ and Kingdom  without the usual corruption of self-serving reciprocity (Matt 6:4,6,18).

This kind of Kingdom gift-economy requires three paradigm shifts:

• From individualized wealth-building to Kingdom gift-giving: The gift must always  move to the area of greatest need. This should challenge Modern ecclesial power-structures.
• From scarcity to limited abundance: Ex 16 teaches neither the total scarcity of Modern economics nor the radical abundance of naive economics, but the daily limited abundance that requires communal cooperation.
• From altruism to transcendent reciprocity: The Modern charity characterized by altruism is unilateral and often retains socio-economic boundaries, but the group reciprocity depicted in Ex 16 and 2 Cor 8 strives for equality.

Interview With Jason

Q: How did you become interested in your topic?

A: I’ve always been intrigued by the economic practices depicted in Acts 2 and 4. In my early twenties, when I started taking the Bible seriously, I was shocked to discover communal practices in scripture, and, in my naiveté, equally distressed that we weren’t emulating those practices in our church. Whenever I pointed it out to pastors and elders I was given the standard “those were different times” speech, which never satisfied me. In the spring of 2007 I was the outreach and evangelism pastor at the Grove City Vineyard in Columbus, Ohio and we were planning a 40-day outreach campaign. The senior pastor challenged me to come up with something different, so I pitched the idea of creating an online expression of Acts 2, where people would freely give to each other out of their extra stuff. He loved the idea and Twoshirts.org was born. That experienced re-birthed this interest in me, and gave me an excuse to explore it deeper. But it wasn’t until I started reading the ethnographic data from archaic societies that I began to see scripture very differently. Sometime during that 40-day campaign someone dropped a copy of Mauss’ book “The Gift” in my office inbox. To this day, I have no idea who gave me that book, but I’m grateful. Reading it launched me into the rather deep world of gift-thinking, from Mauss to Levi-Strauss in sociology and anthropology, to Hyde in the realm of art and literature, to Derrida, Marion, and Caputo in philosophy and theology. It’s a rather deep, interdisciplinary well and I’m just scratching the surface. There are so many similarities to ancient Jewish economic practices that I became convinced that we tend to read these passages through the lens of Adam Smith and Modern economics, when so much of Jewish faith and practice reflects the reciprocal economic thinking of archaic agricultural gift-giving societies.

Q: How do you think your paper is relevant to the Vineyard movement at large?

A: The Vineyard has always been conspicuously oriented toward expressions of mercy, and is currently coming through a period of significant wrestling with issues of equality in leadership practices, particularly concerning gender and race. Given those factors, I think the Vineyard is a perfect place for rethinking the theology behind our economic practices, whether that manifests in caring for the poor, living sustainably, or striving for equality in positions of power. I think the Church at large needs a theology of equality that is inter-testamental and holistic, which empowers an eschatologically-rooted embodiment of that equality now. The prevailing Christian approach to mercy and charity – while it does a great deal of good – is ultimately a dead-end because it doesn’t represent a sustainable equality, it only patches the holes in one direction, from rich to poor, or from majority to minority. What we see in Acts 2, Acts 4, and 2 Cor 8 is something that theoretically should be sustainable given a society of mutual (transcendent) reciprocity, and I think the Vineyard, because of it’s core value for mercy and commitment to Kingdom theology, is potentially a good incubator for experimenting with what a modern day “society of equality” could look like.

Q: What do you think might be the practical implications of what you’re exploring?

A: It could be as simple as cultivating a community garden, starting a ride-sharing group, or having a church that shares common possessions like tools and equipment. Or it could be as complicated as a networked system of micro-lending and church-to-church budget-sharing networks where prospering churches make up for the struggling churches (which would be an exact duplication of 2 Cor 8). I think there’s tremendous room for experimentation, and I think virtually every church already does something along this kind of continuum, but, in my opinion, seeing these practices in terms of a gift-economy whose goal is needs-based equality versus mere “charity” changes the potential depth and scope of these practices dramatically, especially by deeply challenging our notions of individual autonomy and private wealth in a debt-based, consumer society. Personally, I can’t think of a more timely topic in America. What if, during the greatest economic crisis since the great depression, people could say of our churches that “there were no needy persons among them” (Acts 4:34) because our counter-cultural economic practices had simply eradicated poverty in our midst?

Jason will be available for further questions and dialogue in the comments

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Jason Coker (www.pastoralia.org) is an M.A. student at Fuller Seminary where he studies intercultural leadership. He and his wife Jenell have been leaders in the Vineyard Community of Churches since 1996, spending thirteen years on staff with churches in Park City, Utah and Columbus, Ohio before returning to California in 2008 to finish his degree and plant a church in Oceanside. Jason and Jenell have four children, Chris, Savannah, Judah, and Alannah.

Technorati Tags: 2 Corinthians, Acts, economy, Equality, Exodus, Gift-Economy, gifts, Jason Coker, justice, Society of Vineyard Scholars, SVS, The Cross, The Gift, Vineyard Churches

I Will Have Mercy

^“And the LORD said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.”

At some point in our pursuit of the Christian life we come to a great and terrible realization: we discover to our utter shame that, like the Israelites, we are not really interested in God at all. Instead, we are only interested in what God can do for us. What will God acquire for us? Whom God will conquer for us? Why hasn’t God given us the things we want? In the meantime, we may also find to our even greater shame that what we really want is to hold on to our sin, and so, also like the Israelites, we construct new idols to replace old ones (Exodus Chapter 32).

This is just the situation Moses finds himself in as a leader. The people of God have shown themselves to be “stiff-necked” and unwilling to yield to the good commands of the Lord, and so God has decided to grant them their deepest sinful desire: he will give them their riches and their inheritance – the land He has promised – and send them into it alone, without himself. Otherwise, He says, because of they are disobedient, “if I were to go with you, even for a moment, I might destroy you” (Exodus 33:5).

Then something amazing happens, and perhaps this has happened to you too. Because God has offered to abandon them to their sin, Moses and the people realize their mistake. Their great inheritance and their great riches exist not in the wealth of the land that has been promised, but rather in the very presence of God among them, and so Moses cries out before the Lord on behalf of the people, “If your presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all other peoples on the face of the earth?” (Exodus 33:15-16)

Moses proclaims that his desire, and the desire of the people, is for nothing but God, and even if gaining God means losing everything else, they will willingly leave their treasures behind.

What follows in verse 19 is perhaps the greatest revelation of all; God responds mercifully. Our relationship with God is not based on our ability to obey it is based solely on His ability to have mercy on us. They do not deserve Him and neither do we, but the mercy and compassion of God overcomes the obstacle of our sin and judgment.

Technorati Tags: Christianity, Exodus, Mercy, Moses

Toward a Missional Economy, Part 4

In Part 1 I proposed that the gift-economy in Exodus 16 (and by extension, 2 Cor as the defining economic narrative of the bible. In Part 2 I suggested that Postmodern subcultures are already demonstrating a shift toward these economic “rules of the household,” providing a missional opportunity for the Church in Western Culture. And in Part 3 I said the first of three paradigm shifts required is “from wealth building to gift-giving.” Today, I’ll touch on the second shift.

From Scarcity to Abundance
The second shift we must experience in order to embody the economics of Exodus 16 is from scarcity to abundance. The modern science of Economics relies entirely on the concept of scarcity, assuming that there isn’t enough for everyone. Therefore we must compete in order to build our own wealth and hoard enough to provide for ourselves in an uncertain future. Yet the outrageous proposition of Exodus 16 is that God is able to meet our daily needs. Actually, it’s even more outrageous than that, for God’s intention is clearly that through His provision, and the economy of His people, everyone’s needs will actually be met. This is what biblical “equality” means.

This is what we see occurring in Exodus 16. There is an illusion of scarcity caused by the un-equal gathering of resources. Some families have incidentally gathered more than they actually need, while others have gathered too little. Even though there is enough for everyone, for the time being (that is, for each day), the supply is finite but not scarce. Therefore the temporary limitation on the total amount of provision results in the appearance of scarcity because of unequal gathering. The solution is simple, but requires cooperation; move the ample gift of God around in order to fill the void.

Paul applies this same perspective of limited abundance to the shifting needs of the early Church. There appears to be a scarcity of money to support needs within certain churches, but Paul recognizes that while there isn’t an unlimited supply of resources, there is more than enough to go around if only they will share. This is why Paul assures them that giving away their extra won’t result in hardship:

Our desire is not that others would be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality (2 Cor 8:13).

True scarcity would have resulted in genuine hardship for the givers. Unlimited abundance would mean nobody would ever have to give away their surplus, because everyone will always have more than they need. But, just as with Manna in the desert and also as with the spiritual gifts of the Church (1 Cor 12), God has given a limited abundance of resources in order to ensure communal interdependence – there is just enough to meet everyone’s needs as long as everyone pitches in.

Surprisingly, the sociologist Marcel Mauss claimed that all ancient gift-based cultures apparently had some such form of equality-ethic like this. In his landmark book, The Gift: The Form and Reason For Exchange in Archaic Societies, he observes that in various cultural religious practices,

“Alms are the fruits of a moral notion of the gift and of fortune, on the one hand, and of a notion of sacrifice on the other. Generosity is an obligation, because [God] avenges the poor [...] for the superabundance of happiness and wealth of certain people who should rid themselves of it. This is the ancient morality of the gift, which has become a principle of justice.”

Here Mauss is correlating the practice of gift-giving to our common human quest for justice. He’s saying that the religious practice of alms giving is a special form of gift that ensures justice for those who have been excluded from the interdependence of the community by the powerful who refused to share their surplus. In this way giving is a form of God’s vengeance. Mercy becomes justice by re-balancing the scales. Miroslav Volf seems to agree, stating in Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace, that human gifts, like Christ’s,

“…should aim at establishing parity in the midst of drastic and pervasive inequality.”

In other words, communities of faith bring justice to society by redistributing the limited abundance of God, especially in cultures where greed and hoarding have created the illusion of scarcity and the very painful reality of inequality. This is the economic role of the Church in society: to publicly demonstrate a prophetic critique against the unjust power-structures of the world by redistributing the wealth of society with a prejudice toward the poor.

Questions:

1. Why is the shift from scarcity to abundance difficult for us?
2. Why is it that poverty generally isn’t seen as an issue of justice in the United States?

Technorati Tags: 2 Corinthians, economy, Equality, Exodus, Gift-Economy, gifts, justice, Marcel Mauss, Miroslav Volf, poor, poverty, Spiritual Gifts

Toward a Missional Economy, Part 1

I recently spoke on “Economy and Mission” at Verge L.A. 2009. Since starting Twoshirts.org almost two years ago, this has been a significant subject of study for me and it has direct bearing on how we shape community – something we’re currently neck deep in defining over at Ikon Community. So, over the next few days I’ll share my Verge presentation here in the hopes of stimulating some thoughtfulness about how missional churches might follow the Holy Spirit in cultivating subversive, grassroots economic communities in a desert of greed and inequality.

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I am an economist. Not by education or by training. The truth is I don’t know much about “macroeconomic rigidities” or “consensus forecasts,” but what I do know, perhaps naively, is that the heart of economics is merely the stewardship of resources, or, quite literally the “rules of the household” (Greek: oikos & nomos). Therefore, I am economist simply by living.

This means you are an economist too. It doesn’t matter if you’re poorly educated or hopelessly impoverished. Economics isn’t about what you know, or how much you have; it’s about how you handle what you have. Everyone has stuff, and everyone has a way of figuring out what to hold on to and what to let go of.

Obviously, then, God is also an economist because God has stuff – lots of stuff! So if, as I take it, “mission” means going where God goes and doing what God does (John 5:19) then a critical question for us is, “What is God the economist doing?” Or, perhaps a more helpful question for shedding our cultural prejudices would be, “What are the rules of his household?” Continue reading…

Technorati Tags: 2 Corinthians, Church, Consumerism, economy, Exodus, gifts, Ikon Community, Manna, mission, Paul, twoshirts.org, Verge LA