One of North America's foremost preachers, James Forbes Jr. has held the Joe R. Engle Professor of Preaching chair at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Forbes was interviewed in February by Sojourners' Michael Curry at the College of Preachers in Washington, D.C. Two weeks after this interview, Forbes was named pastor of New York's Riverside Church. --The Editors
SOJOURNERS: In what ways has your Pentecostal background influenced your current understanding of ministry and theology?
JAMES FORBES JR.: My Pentecostal background has given me a kind of focus on personal response to the challenge of the faith. To be Pentecostal means that you have to give evidence that you are willing to let the Holy Spirit come into your life, seize the nerve centers of consent, and provide guidance for your life, both your life of worship and your life in the workaday world. The Pentecostal emphasis on faith that makes a difference in daily life is very strong with me.
Also the issue of empowerment is very central to my understanding of ministry. The Holy Spirit empowers us to bear witness to that which we have heard in the gospel. I continue to feel that as a very special part of the way I think and respond to life's challenges.
Who has been the most influential in your development, both personally and theologically?
Usually, as a theologian, one asks which volumes of systematic theology you read, in order to know who you are and where you are going. For me, the influence of the people who were attempting to bear witness to the faith when I was a child made a significant difference.
I usually consider my family and the family of faith as the real theological plant bed to which I bear evidence now in my own consciousness and spirit. The theology of my grandparents and the black community--even though some of these mentors had no credentials--definitely etched something that is a continuing influence in my own self-understanding.
I think of Union Theological Seminary, where I did my theological training. There were just so many people there at the time who had an impact. I call myself a Tillichian Pentecostal because I was at Union when Paul Tillich was giving lectures on his third volume of systematic theology. I didn't understand every word he said, but I got the impression that he brought rational categories that were not incompatible with the experiential dimensions of the Spirit that I had learned about in my early upbringing.
Reinhold Niebuhr was, for me, one of the giants who seemed to have such a grasp of the Christian experience that when he spoke, it was like he leapfrogged from one century to the other. He could discern the major trends, add sensitivity and responsiveness to his students, and always make them feel like they had something important to say.
Niebuhr impacted my understanding of how to have high ideals and yet not to be immobilized by the complications of the concreteness within which these ideals would need to find contemporary expression. I think there is a measure of Niebuhrian realism in me.
In your preaching you often draw upon motifs of liberation theology, its emphasis on the "God of the oppressed," our call to stand with the poor, and the scandal of other-worldly religion that neglects the needy and the suffering. At the same time, you speak of the need to build a "world house," in which all of God's children can live.
How do you work through the tension between praxis-oriented liberation theology and your own seemingly universalist vision? Can Moses and Pharaoh really sit down at the same table together? Is the inclusiveness of the gospel that radical?
As you know, one cannot read the Bible with a kind of linear understanding such that the statement that "God is the God of the oppressed" leads to the belief that oppressors are outside of the concern of God. The gospel also addresses those people who think that God is on their side by virtue of their prosperity and the power they enjoy. It functions to arrest their thinking and to disabuse them of presumptions about God being for them.
When I say that "God is the God of the oppressed," I mean that God is the God of those who are obviously oppressed, and God also is the God of those who are oppressed but who do not yet know it. They will not be able to receive the gospel with gladness of heart until they have given attention and support to the obviously oppressed and discover the degree to which they too, without knowing it, are in need of the liberating word.
My vision is that there is no one who is outside of the loving reach of God and that the message of liberation is extended to all. It is only because people think that they are whole that they do not know that they need a physician.
The sacrificial requirement of the cross seems to be critically needed in the affluent churches of the First World. But many mainline denominations and white, conservative, fringe movements seem to de-emphasize the centrality of the cross and overemphasize the promises of heaven. How does one overcome this problem without alienating people?
I think of myself as a privileged person--a black, middle-class church leader--so I don't have to ask about the rich. The question is, How do I find myself impacted by the gospel such that I am prepared to move in ways that could be classified as sacrificial? My assumption is that the Holy Spirit has a hard time getting me to be faithful, so if I can discern what has helped in that process for me, it would be what I would identify to impact other people.
First, the community that I came up in had the understanding that if God blessed you, you at least ought to have the common decency to invest in some things that God is concerned about. That meant you would sacrifice. You would pay your tithes. When you got special blessings, you would even make a special offering. It became natural.
I believe that the culture in which we find ourselves has to learn that lesson. It has to be taught that it is actually demonic to receive without investing with some sense of reciprocity.
Second, when I have been able to discover how fragile the threads of my life are, when I discover the foundations on which I stand in times when everything begins to fall away around me, when I discover how dependent I am upon God, it seems natural to me to ask what I can render unto the Lord for all God's benefits to me. I'm just beginning to discern that hoarding resources may give temporary satisfaction and delight, but the long-term consequence is the necessity to secure myself against those who feel defrauded by my hoarding of the resources of the good earth.
That means, then, that I am able to see that sacrifice is enlightened self-interest. I think we need to be able to have prophets, preachers, and teachers who lead people to see that connection before it's too late.
President Bush promised during his presidential campaign to make this a "kinder and gentler nation." Jesse Jackson has said, "Any nation that spends 52 cents of every tax dollar on the military and only two cents on education is a nation in danger of losing its soul." How would you go about making the nation a "kinder and gentler" place?
I am convinced that what we in the church are about is helping people to discern where their security is. We all want to be secure. Especially in times of transition, people have a heightened sense of the urgency for reinforcing their securities--fiscal, military, and otherwise.
The only antidote to what I consider to be a kind of hysteria about security is to teach and preach that upon which we can genuinely trust, so my vocation is a vocation of trust building. I want to proclaim the good news and the faithfulness of God so that people will come to put their trust in God more and more.
However, not everybody will hear my sermon, so on a social and political level I need to begin to explode the illusions about our capacities to secure ourselves. That means I become an adversary of "Star Wars" methodologies and increased technical capacities, since technical development often leads us to more and more disastrous illusions about our capacity to defend ourselves against threats. I need to hold politicians to account and say to them, "Don't use your responsibility to me for national security as your justification for using up the resources of the good earth in some kind of false security system."
I would name it for what it is. It is fraudulent advertising to tell me that there is a kind of technical solution to my fears. I then need to be able to model an increased risk-taking lifestyle in the name of integrity and my trust in God.
We at Sojourners live in one of the poorest neighborhoods of Washington, D.C., and it has a high crime rate and a serious drug problem. All around us we see evidence of a whole generation of young people giving in to the ravages of crack and heroin. We're witnessing the emergence of a whole subculture of despair. What, in your opinion, should the churches be doing to reach these young people?
The church has got to do a better job of getting to young people. That means, for me, that a primary solution to the drug problem, to the crime and violence related to it, is to help people discover what true meaning and purpose is. We need to create Christian education programs that, by their tone and mood, are caring and allow people to enjoy and celebrate together the meaning and joy of life. And we've got to stop the lie that we can synthetically respond to the longing of the human soul.
What are the main questions of social injustice that you feel the church should be confronting today?
There is a litany, and it just depends upon where you are as to what gets included. But you know it's got to deal with racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, militarism, crass materialism. It's got to deal with the way justice is related to the issues of peace and ecology.
As we used to say on the streets where I grew up, "What's happening?" People would say, "Everything's everything." There is no dimension of human existence that does not in some way impinge upon almost every other issue. So for me the litany goes on, but the last poor person I passed who was without food and clothing and a place to stay--that is the most important issue.
I know AIDS is a special concern of yours, and you've spoken extensively about that. Do you have any particular words of wisdom to share regarding that current epidemic?
I try to be sensitive and responsive to human suffering as it manifests itself in persons with AIDS, as well as with their families and those significant others who are affected by it. But the larger challenge for me is to seize this plague in our midst as an occasion to call us back to the golden rule.
The old ideal used to be that before the Fall, we all had permanent immunity; but from what I can see, death is the eventuality of us all. We all have an acquired immunity deficiency. So if I know that to be the case for myself, though it may not yet be upon me by the symptoms of the virus, then I ought to treat people who have AIDS like I myself want to be treated. Human beings, all of whom are dying, must learn how not to be so afraid of death.
I believe also that the issue of AIDS cannot be separated from the question of sexuality. This means that the Christian church has to look at sexuality again and see how it can, in a sense, prepare people for this blessed aspect of God-given existence so that it is not dehumanizing and debilitating in the ways in which we seek to live.
We have to be able to take this issue and let it judge us. How well we know the golden rule, and how well we act on it, will be determined largely by what we do with respect to AIDS patients, their families, and their friends.
As a professor of preaching, what do you feel makes for really good preaching? And in North American Protestantism especially, do you see a danger in an overemphasis on the sermon, even to the point of displacing the centrality of the sacraments?
It seems to me that the Word and sacrament need to be held together. It is true that in some traditions, people elevate one above the other. Most of us tend to place emphasis on the things in which we have the greatest competency. So there are some churches that are much more liturgically minded regarding sacramental worship. Others are much more proclamation focused.
I would simply say that we should work at calling the whole church to serious balance and maintenance of Word and sacrament, but that within that we should rejoice when there are people who out of a special sense of guardianship for one or the other do that with extraordinary fidelity.
The challenge even to those who are specialists in one of these elements is not to neglect the other. I do not anticipate that every church across the land will have that perfect balance. I'd much rather see that the body as a whole begins to balance things out through communication.
Now having said that, good preaching to me is preaching in which the Word of God comes alive in the midst of the congregation so that what the Word points to begins to happen right there as it is proclaimed. Good preaching comes from a dimension of depth and allows our daily living to begin to reflect obedience and response to that Word which God sends. It affects our hearts and our hands and our feet and our minds--the totality of our being.
Good preaching has an immediate impact but is also long-range and growth-producing, nourishing us for the days of stress and strain, depositing a predisposition toward sacrifice and caring for others, a sum of all of the above. Good preaching is preaching that the heart and the mind can celebrate together.
You recently visited South Africa to witness firsthand the effects of apartheid upon the people who live there. What is your impression of the current state of affairs and strife in South Africa, and how can U.S. churches best stand with the church there?
The South African situation can best be described as a situation under demonic control, in that the principalities and powers of the South African government seem beyond the capacity to respond in just and loving and caring ways for the majority of the citizens.
I am convinced that they--that is, government officials and those who support the policies of apartheid--don't know they are in serious bondage. While the government holds people, including children, in detention, they themselves are in a form of detention. It is more devastating to the human spirit, not only of those they oppress, but of themselves.
There is a sadness and a paranoia in the agents of apartheid. They are like Pharaoh. They can't let the people go, and in a deep sense they can't surrender that enclosure called apartheid.
We should look to South Africa as a test case. Can this civilization identify a death-dealing virus in its whole system, deal with it creatively, bringing massive resources to bear? Because if we don't help move South Africa to liberty and justice by international encouragement and support, we are not deserving of the title "civilized."
That means that we, all world citizens, stand judged regarding what we do in response to that glaring manifestation of demon possession. I think that is a very important vocation for us all.
How do you feel about sanctions against South Africa?
The question raised by the issue of sanctions is, How seriously are you prepared to inconvenience evil so that justice may emerge? If you are not prepared to hurt evil, then you are not prepared to commit yourself to justice.
Most of the blacks that I talked with who have been in liberation struggles in South Africa made it clear that they were not interested in people making their chains more comfortable. The real issue is whether there is sufficient evil in apartheid that we would wish to make it well-nigh unprofitable to sustain that enterprise. And if not, we condemn ourselves to be not only collaborators and conspirators for dehumanization, but actually agents and champions of it. There is no neutral territory any longer.
Given the fact that the United Democratic Front has been banned in South Africa under the state of emergency, along with most other groups working to end apartheid through peaceful means, do you feel the church in South Africa is going to be able to muster the kind of interior strength to lead the nonviolent movement for liberation in South Africa?
I hear church leaders indicate that they are determined to put themselves on the line. But I also hear them saying that, given the nature of their situation, if they have to do it alone the bloodshed is likely to be very great. If brothers and sisters from around the nation, from around the world, would come and stand in solidarity--if our blood is mingled with theirs--perhaps less of it will flow.
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