When we roll out of bed each morning a similar routine typically ensues: flip on the lights, take a shower, start the coffee maker, watch the news, pop bread in the toaster, read e-mails, blow dry hair, and open the garage door. What often gets overlooked in this whole process is the amount of electricity we use. Students at Messiah, however, are combating over-use of electricity by encouraging each other to “turn it off.”

Why “Turn it Off?”
The “Turn if Off” campaign, funded by a PA Department of Environmental Protection grant, is a student initiative born out of Earthkeepers, the biology club that educates students about Christian stewardship to God’s creation, and the Restoration House, a community of students living in an off-campus house who commit to limit energy use and reduce waste. The energy reduction campaign they proposed inspired creative and fun competition among students living in campus apartments.

The real objective of the “Turn if Off” campaign goes much farther than friendly competition; it serves a dual purpose of preparing students to receive and understand real utility bills and also to track their energy use in campus apartments. Students residing in apartments receive monthly electric bills, showing them the amount of kilowatt hours they consumed, how much their apartment’s electric costs and the overall use of each apartment building. By sending students mock bills, the College hopes to bring awareness to lifestyle choices, promote responsible living as stewards of God’s creation and lower overall electricity consumption at Messiah. (more…)

Jim Wallis, founder and CEO of Sojourners magazine, and Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute, engaged in an educational debate about the morality of capitalism on Nov. 9.  The debate was a part of this year’s college lecture series, “To Change the World,” that explores the promise and challenge of being a faithful presence in contemporary society.

Peter Greer, the president and CEO of Hope International and ’97 Messiah graduate, introduced the evening’s debate to an audience of over 1,000 with a glimpse of the current state of our national economy. Greer described our country’s state of economic crisis in which our employment rate has reached 9 percent, and Occupy Wall Street demonstrators protest the fact that 24 percent of our nation’s wealth resides in the hands of the top 1 percent of Americans. Greer then recognized the market’s ability to open jobs to alleviate poverty.

Greer opened the floor for civil discourse which he described to be “as important as the topic we’re discussing.” He welcomed Wallis and Brooks, two prolific authors, professors, book writers and men of conviction, character and deep faith. Both presented their stance on the morality of capitalism before engaging in interactive debate. 

“Is capitalism moral? Of course it isn’t,” Brooks boldly stated, momentarily lifting eyebrows of a surprised audience. “Only people are,” he explained. Brooks argued that people are moral creatures by design, and moral arguments beat material arguments every day. Economists forget this, but our nation’s founders knew it when they wrote the Declaration of Independence and chose to exclude the privilege to property in our unalienable rights, substituting it with the pursuit of happiness.

Brooks believes that the key to happiness is earned success, not money. He shared statistics that support this theory, stating that the number of people who report that they are happy hasn’t changed even though our nation and individuals have become massively richer over the last 40 years. Instead, people crave earned success, and capitalism is a system which supports that. “Free enterprise pairs people’s skills with passions,” Brooks explained. “It’s a system that rewards not envy, but aspiration.”

Jim Wallis, on the other hand, argued that our economy is “unfair, unstable and making people unhappy.”

 “We come from a polarized, paralyzed society stuck in ideology,” Wallis began. “Ideology says ‘either or,’ but solutions say ‘and.’” He immediately encouraged the audience to open their minds to comprehensive solutions: “don’t go right, don’t go left, go deeper. This isn’t about winning a debate, but it’s about solving massive economic suffering.”

After sharing saddening statistics about the poverty in America, Wallis dug into the challenge of finding solutions to the problems in our market today. “We can’t just say it’s good business,” Wallis said. “Slavery was once good business. Human trafficking or cheating people on credit cards is good business.” Instead, the market needs a moral framework.

For us as Christians, this means first looking to the Bible. Wallis drew his answer from Matthew 25 where God will one day tell us, “Whatever you did for the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” Wallis explained that this is a judgment test to us as Christians, and he encouraged the audience to use Matthew 25 as their criteria for the evening’s economics conversation.

By adopting this title of “Matthew 25 Christians,” Wallis explains that we can break out of left and right and reach the poor. “Society is best judged of its righteousness or integrity by how it treats the poorest and most vulnerable,” Wallis said. “What do you do when the invisible hand lets go of the common good?”

Wallis proposed that Christians should “go to where the money is” in order to push for change and form a circle around the poorest and most vulnerable. “Are we ideologists or people who care about the metrics of the gospel?” Wallis challenged the audience. 

Greer stepped in and questioned Brooks on how he responds to a system “that has potential to let go of the hand of the common good?”

“We don’t need less capitalism; we need better capitalists,” Brooks answered. The problem according to Brooks is capitalism without accountability. “It’s not enough to earn your success and walk away,” Brooks said, arguing that this is the moral imperative of an opportunity society.  Brooks suggests that good capitalists need to promote social mobility by promoting “education, faith, family and community.”

Wallis responded by arguing that we are in a different period now where inequality is so great and immediate help for the struggling poor is needed. Wallis agrees that economic development is the long term solution, but at this point for the poor, “it’s not dependency, it’s survival.” Wallis went back to the Bible to reference Jubilee, the Biblical practice of freeing people of their debts nationwide, and suggested that this is the “Biblical corrective for the sinful tendency of the market.”

Wallis and Brooks responded to final questions by discussing specific changes in legislation that would help solve the current economic crisis. Brooks proposed cuts in subsidies and entitlements, explaining the immorality of entitlements to reward workers without looking at their income. Wallis echoed Brooks’ suggestions and also proposed a cut in military spending and a raise in levels of taxable income.

While both Wallis and Brooks differed on viewpoints of the best way to do it, they both shared a genuine desire to be a Christian in today’s modern world. Greer closed the evening in prayer, and Brooks, Wallis and the audience in Brubaker auditorium came together in their desire to ask tough questions and seek God. 

Watch video footage of the debate.

Story by Mary-Grace MacNeil `13.

James Davison Hunter addressed a packed Hostetter Chapel Oct. 26 on what it means to be a Christian in our world today. Hunter, a distinguished professor of religion, culture and social theory at University of Virginia, shared his argument from one of his most recently published books, “To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World.” Hunter’s book inspired the theme of this year’s college lecture series, “To Change the World,” that explores the promise and challenge of being a faithful presence in contemporary society.

Hunter began by posing his central questions: “How can Christians be faithful in the world around them? How do we guide youth who want to give up their lives to change the world?”

Hunter outlined three paradigms that Christians use to culturally engage our world: “defensive against,” “relevance to” and “purity from.” He advocates that each model misconstrues the fundamental challenges that Christians face today. “Christians don’t know how to deal with pluralism,” Hunter said. “They see difference as danger or darkness, or they don’t see it all.”

 According to Hunter, none of the current paradigms correctly address difference and disillusion, the two concepts that challenge Christian faith to its core. The struggle to overcome difference is a struggle to answer the question of how to be authentically Christian in a pluralistic world. Disillusion then comes into play when words are interpreted differently by each individual or denomination.

“If we look to Scripture, it offers a different approach to the world and word,” Hunter said. “God said and it was. There is a trust between word spoken and the world as it came to be.” This is seen throughout the Bible—in creation, incarnation and healing.

 “This is a demonstration of God’s love as the word and the world come together,” Hunter explained. “Not because words describe the world, but because God’s word is always enacted.”

In the reality of that basic truth is Hunter’s answer to the central question of how to culturally engage our world as Christians. He proposes a new paradigm, “faithful presence within,” that is based off of God’s demonstration of his love for us.

“God pursues us, identifies with us and offers us life through sacrificial love,” Hunter said, suggesting that Christians should model their interactions with the world after God’s interactions with us. 

First, Christians should be fully present to each other, imitating our creator by pursuing one another. “We were strangers to Christ, and our treatment of strangers is a measure of righteousness,” Hunter said. “However different we are, difference does not represent darkness or danger.”

Next, Hunter suggested that God intends for us to be fully present to our tasks. He referenced Colossians 3 where it is written, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart.” Hunter believes that a faithful presence in our modern world involves the pursuit of excellence in all of our tasks.

Finally, Hunter encouraged Christians to be fully present to the fears of social change. “As Christians, we need to seek the welfare of all, not only the house of God,” he said. “When all members of the body of God are engaged, the word becomes flesh! Our faith is then authentic because it is enacted.”

Hunter concluded that this is his vision for the entire church even in its diversity: “to enact the shalom of God through faithful presence.”

“Will that change the world?” Hunter asked. “Maybe… but it’s impossible to say.  Christians won’t make the world entirely new, but we could possibly make it a little better.”

Story by Mary-Grace MacNeil `13.