Common good

Illustration of two people building a bridge from both sides of a canyon.

Illustration by Jackson Joyce

IN HIS FIRST speech as president-elect, Joe Biden outlined four priorities his incoming administration plans to address: systemic racism, the COVID-19 crisis, climate change, and economic hardship and recovery. I am encouraged not just by the breadth of policy detail and ambition in his Build Back Better platform but also by the radically different narrative for the nation and its future. These four pillars should resonate for people across the diversity of the church, and they will require that we generate significant political will, urgency, and accountability within the new administration and Congress to achieve progress on these priorities and more. Along with policy reforms, we also face an imperative to renew our broken and toxic political culture.

In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus proclaims, “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand” (Matthew 12:25). This profound truth is relevant for the church and for the nation.

Image via RNS/Creative Commons/Bret Hartman/TED

The talk — a surprise for all in the audience — recapitulated the key themes of the Argentinian pope’s view of the human person: We are all related and interconnected; scientific and technological progress must not be disconnected from social justice and care for the neighbor; and that the world needs tenderness.

I am a scholar of modern Catholicism and its relations with the world of today. From my perspective, there are two essential elements of this talk that are important to understand: the message of the pope and his use of the media.

Ryan Hammill 9-16-2016

Immigrants' rights activists rally on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Image via /Shutterstock.com

If you start picking and choosing what parts of Jesus’ life to believe and which to disregard, this line of reasoning breaks down. And yet our post-Christian culture agrees, broadly speaking, that caring for outcasts is a good thing to do. After all, Kristof writes with this assumption in the pages of The New York Times. Why is this?

Image via REUTERS/Charles Mostoller/RNS

What criteria do we use to pick a president?

We hear the daily stats and buzz, but presidential elections are about the big picture — where we want to go and the best way to get there. This means looking not only at political options but also at the way we humans are set up — how we’re wired. When public policies don’t account for that, we have reduced horizons, diminished resources, and polarization.

"The Church’s social teachings, stretching back to the first modern encyclical about the industrial economy, Rerum Novarum in 1891, to Centesimus Annus, to Pope Francis’s inspiring encyclical Laudato Si’ this past year, have grappled with the challenges of the market economy. There are few places in modern thought that rival the depth and insight of the Church’s moral teachings on the market economy."

Stephen Seufert 2-29-2016

Image via /Shutterstock.com

Inequality will always exist — at least in the material sense. But steps can be taken to provide the most basic life giving provisions to the least fortunate among us. This bountiful nation has the material and manpower to fight the worst effects of poverty, yet seems to lack the courage, determination, and direction to take any measurable action due to the cynicism, hate, and greed found in the current political and economic system.

Paul Silas Peterson 10-07-2015

Image via  / Shutterstock

As an Oregonian who grew up deer hunting in Oregon’s forests and fishing in Oregon’s rivers (including the beautiful Umpqua River), I have a deep respect for traditional hunting culture and responsible gun ownership. Like everyone else, I was overwhelmed with sadness at seeing the news of the recent shooting in the beautiful town of Roseburg, Ore. Like so many others who are praying for these families and for this town, I cannot imagine the sense of loss that the Roseburg families are going through right now. I add my prayers to the chorus of prayers; may God help these families and this community through this unspeakable catastrophe.

The Center for American Progress now claims that in 2015 fatalities caused by guns will surpass those caused by cars. For these reasons – and adding in the massive psychological damage caused by gun violence in families and communities — it is not an exaggeration to claim that gun violence is the single greatest domestic problem in the United States today. Gun violence is also, of course, a huge economic burden. Americans spend around $230 billion a year paying for it.

2-23-2015
Most Rev Justin Welby said that it was impossible for the Church "get on with the family business of saving souls" while politicians dealt with public policy.
11-04-2014
Do you want the priorities to change in Washington? Then change Huntsville, says Jim Wallis.
10-28-2014
In fact, it seems that these days, the ancient idea of the common good has become most uncommon.
9-10-2014
When considering what's next after graduation, think of others.
7-21-2014
In a recent article for TIME, Jim Wallis asks: Whatever Happened to the Common Good? Wallis notes: The common good has origins in the beginnings of Christianity. An early church father, John Chrysostom (c. 347–407), once wrote: “This is the rule of most perfect Christianity, its most exact definition, its highest point, namely, the seeking of the common good . . . for nothing can so make a person an imitator of Christ as caring for his neighbors.
The Editors 7-10-2014

A study guide for engaging Muslim-Christian relations

Andrew Wilkes 7-09-2014

FAITH-ROOTED Organizing: Mobilizing the Church in Service to the World outlines a theological cartography of social change. In this critical intervention, Alexia Salvatierra and Peter Heltzel reimagine—and as a necessary consequence, rechart—the landscape of vision, action, and strategic planning needed for social change.

Full disclosure: I have attended several trainings conducted by the co-authors. Indeed, the dual authorship of the text is a principal strength. Faith-Rooted Organizing blends the voice of an evangelical-activist theologian in Heltzel with the homespun profundity of a seasoned pastor and campaign organizer in Salvatierra. The authors delight readers with complementary writing styles: Heltzel speaks through theological propositions, interpolated intermittently with jazz references and theological punch lines; Salvatierra communicates through proverbs, organizing anecdotes, poignant biblical passages, and narrative side notes.

The result is a well-argued and accessible text that should resonate from the seminary to the sanctuary. Their driving thesis is that faith communities, especially Christian ones, should organize for social change in a way that is rooted and guided by the stories, symbols, sayings, and scriptures of our faith. Faith-Rooted Organizing functions as an instruction manual on effective advocacy while providing a theological rationale and vocabulary for a vocation marked by tremendous victories and colossal failures, breakthrough partnerships and fragmented coalitions, glimpses of beloved community and portraits of democracy stillborn.

Jim Wallis 6-10-2014
Birthday cake icon, Super3D / Shutterstock.com

Birthday cake icon, Super3D / Shutterstock.com

Last week, I celebrated my birthday. This annual occurrence has taken on new meaning in light of what happened last year around the same time. I had major surgery for prostate cancer. The diagnosis was quite unexpected, with absolutely no signs or symptoms beforehand. But my health provider, Kaiser Permanente, caught it in time and the doctors at the National Institutes of Health performed a very successful operation that removed all of the cancer. So far, regular tests have shown there is no more cancer in my body and for that, our family is very grateful.

Gratitude is the right word and the deepest feeling I had while celebrating my birthday, one year after the cancer surgery. The emotion of that gratitude went even deeper when we lost one of my dearest friends, Christian ethics professor Glen Stassen, just a few weeks ago — to prostate cancer that spread outside of his prostate. They didn’t catch Glen’s cancer in time.

I vividly remember my response after the surgery last year — a new recognition of how fragile and utterly precious life is and especially how utterly priceless your closest relationships are — the ones you love most in the world. For me that’s my wife Joy, and my sons Luke and Jack. My larger family got included in that too, my dearest friends where I live and work, and around the world, my extended community.

I resolved to operate every day with that recognition of how precious my life and relationships are to me. 

Julie Polter 6-04-2014
Life with Purpose

In Visions of Vocation: Common Grace for the Common Good, Steven Garber writes eloquently of the challenge "to see with the eyes of the heart, to see oneself as responsible for the way the world is and isn't" without succumbing to cynicism. IVP Books

Saved Songs

Just months before civil war erupted in Syria, a small group of Syria Sufi musicians known as NAWA were recorded peforming nearly lsot melodies, songs, and poems on Ancient Sufi Invocations and Forgotten Songs from Aleppo. This is the first album in a planned four-part Sacred Voices of Syria series. Cowbell/Lost Origins

Jim Wallis 5-09-2014

(Kunal Mehta / Shutterstock)

WE LIVE IN an age in which we are encouraged to make decisions that further our personal benefit. This attitude is so pervasive that it extends even to our spiritual lives.

There is a danger in making our faith so personal and inward, so focused on the first commandment to love God with all our hearts, minds, and strength, that we forget to keep the second commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves.

Though our culture would tell us to look out for number one, Christ’s upside-down kingdom offers a different and subversive message: Lose your life and you’ll find it. The church was designed to display the “manifold wisdom of God” by creating a community full of people who, like Jesus, put others before themselves and seek the common good. Christian community is intended to be a living witness, to demonstrate and to anticipate the future of the world that has arrived in the person of Jesus Christ.

In other words, it’s impossible to keep the second commandment without loving God with everything we have, but it’s also impossible to keep the first without loving our neighbors as ourselves.

A thriving common good and the quality of our life together are deeply affected by the personal decisions we all make. The commons—those places we come together as neighbors and citizens to share public space—will never be better than the quality of our own lives and households.

Joe Kay 1-31-2014
Single thread, itsmejust / Shutterstock.com

Single thread, itsmejust / Shutterstock.com

I noticed a loose thread in a blanket the other day and was reminded of something my mom always said: Never pull on a loose thread. All that will do is make it worse. It’ll yank on the other threads and wind up creating a knot. Even if you do manage to remove the one loose thread without doing too much damage to the fabric, it’ll leave a space that starts the nearby threads working their way loose, too.

Soon, the whole thing unravels. Removing even one thread from the fabric creates big problems.

Isn’t it the same with us?

Each of us is a thread woven into the fabric of our world. We’re looped around each other, pulled tightly to one another, intimately bound to one another. We’re so closely intertwined that we can’t be separated without making it all unravel.

By ourselves, we are a thread. Together, we are a blanket.

The weaver made it so.

Jim Wallis 1-28-2014
Jim Wallis speaking at the World Economic Forum

Jim Wallis speaking at the World Economic Forum

"We are perhaps among the most included in this global economy. So how will the most included reach out to the most excluded this year?"

Editor’s Note: The following text and video is from Jim Wallis’ closing talk at the World Economic Forum in Davos, calling those in positions of leadership to implement values that benefit the common good.

In our opening session for this 2014 annual meeting, we heard a letter read to us from Pope Francis, a leader who has captured the attention of the world. He called us here to “deeper reflection” and to “reshaping the world.” He said something quite striking, “I ask you to insure that humanity is served by wealth and not ruled by it.”

So, to that deeper reflection: I believe that for many of us here at Davos, there was a moment — a remark from a session, a smaller discussion, a meal interaction, a personal conversation, or a walk in the snow — that made us think and feel some things we don’t normally focus on in our day-to-day environment back home. It could have been an insight, a new angle or framework, a challenge, or a reminder of things lost — something that struck you more deeply than just more talk and made an impact on you. Often these insightful moments are about our values, or challenge our values, or bring us back to a moral compass that we have, or would like to have, or miss from earlier in our lives.

Beau Underwood 9-30-2013

(Jim Vallee / Shutterstock)

AS FIGHTS ABOUT the budget and other economic issues are again riveting the nation’s capital, the rest of the country yawns. Possible government shutdowns, threats to default on our nation’s debt, and proposals to decimate food assistance for struggling Americans seem to be business as usual in Washington, D.C. These budget battles have become so frequent that it is tempting to dismiss it all as political posturing. But that would be a mistake.

The biggest challenge facing Congress should be a non-issue. The debt ceiling is simply the amount of debt the U.S. is legally allowed to hold. It is about paying off the bills that Congress has already incurred from past appropriations—not about giving permission for new government spending, as many people falsely assume. Congress has raised it nearly 100 times since the end of World War II, but it only recently became a political football. Because the consequences of not raising the debt ceiling and defaulting on our nation’s obligations could be catastrophic, some leaders have tried to leverage it for political gain. After the country came close enough to a default in 2011 to receive a credit downgrade, President Obama has responsibly refused to negotiate over raising it. His assumption is that GOP leaders in Congress wouldn’t throw the economy off the cliff for their own political gain. The American people are left watching this game of chicken and hoping somebody blinks.

While this is clearly a partisan game, the stakes couldn’t be higher. The U.S. has always honored its debts. Should the country default, the market turmoil and long-term effects could be catastrophic for the global economy. Domestically, it could throw the U.S. back into recession.