Spirit in Action
Justice Rising - John Heagle
John Heagle, author of Justice Rising: The Emerging Biblical Vision, has been a Catholic priest for 48 years, early working as the first director of the Office of Justice & Peace in La Crosse, WI. He’s also a licensed psychotherapist and co-director of Therapy & Renewal Associates in Lincoln City, Oregon, and the author of seven books.
- Broadcast on:
- 11 Nov 2012
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- other
[music] ♪ Let us sing this song for the healing of the world ♪ ♪ That we may hear as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world home ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpsmeat. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service. Hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred fruit in your own life. ♪ Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world ♪ ♪ That we may dream as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world home ♪ We've got an inspirational, thought-provoking, dedicated work for peace and justice and the good of all humanity here with us today for Spirit in Action. John Heagle has been a Roman Catholic priest for more than 40 years now, doing the pastoral work of that profession, but also working as the first director of the Office of Justice and Peace in La Crosse, Wisconsin. He's also a licensed psychotherapist and co-director of Therapy and Renewal Associates in Lincoln City, Oregon. And he's the author of seven books with the latest being, Justice Rising, The Emerging Biblical Vision. John Heagle joins us by phone from Oregon. John, I'm really excited to have you here today for Spirit in Action. And I'm happy to be with you, Mark. Thank you. I want to note right from the beginning that I'm not calling you Father John and Heagle, which is, of course, pretty much the norm in our society. I think you know, because you know that I'm Quaker, where this can come from. Does that affect you pro or con or what do you think about that? I'm very comfortable with you simply addressing me as John. Although I recognize that the term "father" is the long tradition in my Catholic tradition, I think there's some difficulties with that word. It has a kind of a patriarchal-dominative impact. I look upon it as being primarily nurturing that I truly am a father spiritually. But I think there are some difficulties with even the title. But for now, I'm simply very comfortable being addressed as John. Let's mention a little bit about your job history. How long did you practice as a parish priest? How else have you lived out the gospel? Well, I've been a priest for 47 years. And the first 20 years of that experience was in the Diocese of the Cross. I was assigned as an associate pastor to begin with in the Cross. And from the Diocese of the Cross, I was ordained in 1965. And after that, I went on for graduate studies and came back and I was the campus minister at the Turbo University. And I taught philosophy there for eight years. Then I went from there to a pastorate out in the country in a wonderful place called Willard, Wisconsin Holy Family Parish, then to St. Patrick's Parish in Eau Claire in 1977 until 1985. I was also the director of the Office of Justice and Peace in the Diocese of the Cross. I was the first director starting in 1976. Then, in 1985, Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen of Seattle, who was a very peace-oriented and peace activist, Archbishop, invited Sister Fran Furter and myself to come out and begin a ministerial counseling service in Seattle. And so for the last 27 years, I've been working on the Pacific Northwest as a psychotherapist. I've done pastoral ministry on weekends. I've written and I teach as an adjunct instructor at Seattle University in the School of Theology and Ministry. And does that mean that you do or don't have free time? It sounds like you've got a busy, busy life there. But I have to recognize that I'll be 75 in a few months and I have to recognize I do not have the energy I used to have. So I try to also take some downtime. I love to hike and I love to bike when I can. Many of my friends and certainly my family would say that I'm a workaholic, but I don't think of myself that way. Well, one of the ways that you fill in your spare time is by writing books occasionally. Justice Rising, the emerging biblical vision, is the one that I just read and which I want to ask you a number of things about. One of the things you mentioned what you do or what you were engaged there to do is ministerial counseling service. How does that differ being ministerial counseling service differ from being a regular psychotherapist? Oh, that's a very good question. Archbishop Huntausen asked us to begin a counseling resource specifically for Catholic ministers. That would be for priests, sisters, lay persons including deacons and their wives and career ministers in the Catholic Church. So we did that for the first five years and then the needs of the community became more ecumenical and it became much more of an expanded ministry to people of all denominations. And primarily dealt with healing, with overcoming one's personal background in terms of abuse and domestic violence. A lot of things related to recovery. So it's much more expansive now. Therapy and Renewal Associates is an expansive ecumenical open-ended program. And the only thing that makes it different from just any ordinary psychotherapeutic clinic is that it also honors, enhances and respects the spiritual dimension of every person's life. Well, the main reason I got you here is because I heard you speak at a Jonah banquet and Jonah here in the Chippewa Valley of Wisconsin, joining our neighbors advancing hope. It's congregations coming together to do good work in the world. And you were, of course, our keynote speaker. I became also aware of your book, "Justice Rising." You spoke compellingly then about justice and how we work in the world. And I want to pass a few of those insights onto our listeners. So let's get started with that. I want to ask you about this concept of evolving justice in some religious circles, talking about evolution. It's a dirty word of sorts, right? Yes. Evolution and particularly the idea of justice evolving or our understanding of God evolving. Some people probably will pitch a fit if they hear that. Is this just the norm in Catholic circles to think of it this way, or is this more still leading edge? I would say that the notion of evolution, of change, of development has become the norm in the Catholic Church. Now, there would be some Catholics who would not necessarily agree with that because most of us grew up with the notion that everything changes except the Catholic Church or the faith. And yet you made a very important connection, Mark. You said the relationship between the evolution of justice and the evolution of our understanding of God. I think that's a very significant area because recent surveys confirmed that the majority of people here in the United States believe in God. And for me, the question always is, well, in which God do we believe? Are we speaking here of the God of what I would call mythic consciousness, which is a God who's out there, up there, somewhere, kind of the classic God of the bearded white man in the sky? Or are we talking about the God of the clans and the tribes who survived by blood vengeance and threatened extermination? And if there's all kinds of passages, mostly in the Hebrew scriptures that speak about a God of vengeance and a God who's a, well, the term Yahweh Sabahoth is the God of the Warriors. It's a warrior God. So is that the God we believe in? Or are we referring to the God perhaps of the early nation-states or even the nation-states today, which have as their goal, military victory at all cost? Is that the God that we believe in? So in the scriptures, there are portraits of God ranging from the creator to the destroyer, from a liberator to a law giver, from a protector of the poor to a perpetrator of vengeance. People understood that that's who God was. And so as Karen Armstrong and many other, I would say the majority of scholars today related to scripture would see that the understanding of God has changed, evolved as the human spirit has also changed and evolved. So that also means that justice and our understanding of what it means to do justice and to be a just person has changed. I found myself in biblical discussions with people who I think would identify as fundamentalists that often, when I start speaking of war or peace issues, they'll say, no, we're not pacifists that way. Don't you know that in the Bible it says God commanded these people to war and these people to war and these people to war? And I certainly can find those passages. On the other hand, when it comes to how you worship God, so for instance, the blood sacrifice, all that kind of thing, well, no, that's out because Jesus came and that's all changed. Do you see Jesus as a pivotal step or is it simply incremental throughout the Hebrew scriptures into the Christian scriptures? Well, I would see Jesus as a very pivotal step in the evolving understanding of justice in the Hebrew tradition. We have to continue to remember that Jesus was a Jew. I think it's a very false assumption to say that because we're Christian, we somehow denigrate or dismiss the whole Jewish tradition. There's something very profound that's evolving there among the Jewish people too related first of all to justice. The first forms of early justice in the Hebrew scriptures that are mentioned indirectly, but we're very clear before the time of the covenant, is that it was justice as vengeance. There was a figure called the goeil, that's G-O apostrophe E-L in Hebrew. The goeil literally means in Hebrew the next of kin. And the first task of the goeil was to avenge blood. If someone from my tribe was murdered, I am to go as the next of kin, as the goeil, go out and kill one, or up to seven, of the other enemy tribe to deter that ever happening again. Obviously, that's a form of honor killing that's still going on today. I mean, vengeance is not over, clearly. Now, the first step away from that was at the time of the covenant in which the Hebrew people understood God saying to them, don't take seven, take one, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. That becomes kind of the symbol, but that's what I would call retributive justice. And that's what gets enshrined in most of our civil societies. And I think painfully and unfortunately, it's also what is held up in most churches and synagogues, probably also in the Muslim tradition as well. Retributive justice basically settles for the rule of law, which is the image of the Lady of Justice with the scales in one hand, and sword in the other, and blindfolded. So, evolution of justice is a very important part of where Jesus becomes the significant pivotal turning point. The third step, the biggest leap happens after the covenant when the question arises for the Hebrew people. Well, what about the people who don't have a go-ale, who don't have a next of kin? And who are the obvious people who did not have a protector? The classic images in the Hebrew scriptures are the widows, the orphans, and the immigrants, the strangers. They were to be protected by the whole community because they had no one there to be there next of kin. Now, that's an interesting question that arises because the answer that's given somewhere in around chapter 21, 22 of the book of Exodus is, we hear God saying to the people, "You shall not molest the widow, the orphan, or the stranger." And then the question is why? What's the reason? And the answer is because when you were strangers, when you were immigrants in Egypt, I was your go-ale. I was your next of kin. So this whole notion of justice and vengeance begins to shift from getting back at people to protecting the vulnerable, to reaching out to those who do not have protection. A very significant shift that happens at the time of the Exodus and after that of the understanding of justice. But the greatest leap takes place then in the Hebrew scriptures in the second part of Isaiah, sometimes called Second Isaiah, where we have the four songs of the servant. The servant figures a very mysterious figure of what I would call a religious archetype of someone who bears the pain of others, who is the protector of other people, and instead of taking blood to bring about justice, he or she becomes willing to give his own blood or her own blood in order to bring about Shalom and healing and reconciliation. And that's the figure that Jesus claims to be, both by his teaching and by his ministry in what we call the Christian Gospels or the Christian New Testament. The scene, for instance, in Luke chapter 4, where Jesus comes back to his own synagogue for the first time, when he arrives the synagogue beat us as well as long as you're here and you're kind of becoming a famous preacher, why don't you do the first reading, which was always from the prophets? And it says in the Gospel of Luke that he handed in the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, and it specifically mentioned that Jesus unrolled the scroll until he found the passage, which was one of the echoes of the servant's songs. The Spirit of the Lord is anointed me to bring good news to the poor, to heal the blind, to set free those who are in prison, and to announce good news to all the people. So Jesus claims that role of a Shalom maker, of someone who bears the pain of others. Now he's doing it not out of vengeance. We can talk about this a little bit in terms of theology, of atonement or not. Jesus is doing it out of solidarity. And not out of vengeance. The word that comes up for me when I think of Jesus is both grace and mercy, which I think maybe get de-emphasized by a certain number of people theologically, that grace and mercy, they may claim it personally, but they don't claim it as something that's supposed to go out to the wider society. Does that make sense? Am I misperceiving how much of the religious establishment thinks? No, I think that you have a very key point. Most of the theology of redemption in our particular culture, and probably other parts of the world, has become based on what's called the atonement theory, which was basically rooted in the feudal ages with St. Ansel and others who talked about God as the great feudal king. And somehow sin, human sin, dishonored God. It insulted his dignity. And so somehow this, having been dishonored, needed to be made up. And no human being could do that. Only some kind of a divine being could do that. And so Jesus comes and tones for the rest of humanity. In essence, takes the hit of God's vengeance for human beings, and we are redeemed then, as they say, through the blood of Christ. Now that atonement theory becomes eventually, in many fundamentalist theories, a substitution theory that Jesus almost substitutes for humanity. And there is a certain kind of leftover of that vengeance part that's still there. I mean, if I were to put it very baldly, there's almost a hint of divine child abuse, if I could put it that way, that God was so angry with the rest of us that he took it out on Jesus. Which I have a hard time understanding. Maybe you can make sense to me, because it never has made sense to me. I understand a lot about God and God's love. I count myself a follower of Jesus. But this idea that, to put it in another metaphor, God's upset with us, so in order to stop being upset with us, God hits his own hand with a hammer. He abuses himself, right, with Jesus being part of God. That doesn't quite click for me. Maybe you have a better way of saying it that maybe I'll understand for the first time in my life. Well, I guess I have to say that it doesn't click with me either. And I think that in most mainline Protestant churches, and also in the Catholic Church, there is a shift away from that atonement emphasis. That redemption is not so much about atonement as it is about God's unconditional love being in solidarity with human beings. And I think part of it is a shift from understanding sin as something just individual and personal, to seeing it as something systemic, that violence and injustice are part of systems. And so the way I would put it, perhaps in an oversimplified way, is to say that it's not so much that Jesus died for our sins. He died for our systems. And what I mean by that is certainly there are all kinds of sins, but we don't tend to recognize in many of the religious traditions that those can be systematic sins, sins that are part of political and cultural structures, like just to ask ourselves today, for instance, as we're visiting, why did it take Christianity until about 250 years ago to finally say slavery is wrong? What was going on in terms of our understanding of the gospel and the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures that prevented us from reaching the conclusion that you don't treat other human beings that way? I think it was that we sold out at some level to culture, to empire, that we accommodated, starting very early after Constantine, to the Roman Empire. And I guess the same question could be asked, well, why did it take until the early part of the 20th century for women to get the right to vote? Because there is a systemic, dominant system called patriarchy in place that used the scriptures, that used all kinds of other things to prevent the real change coming about. I remember one time hearing Dom Helder Kamara, who was the Archbishop of Versiphia in Brazil, a very profound and deeply committed man to justice and recognizing the systems of injustice. And he once said, and I quote, "I feed the poor, I'm called a saint. I ask why the poor have no food, I'm called a communist." The churches have always been very good with personal charity, reaching out to help the oppressed and to reaching out to help the poor on an individual basis, but not so big on facing the systems of violence and the systems of injustice. And I think that's what I mean by when I say Jesus died for our sins, but the sin was the sin of systemic violence. And it's in the system. He died because he touched the wrong nerve of dominant power in the Roman Empire and probably in his own religious system. He touched that wrong nerve and confronted violent systems and that got him killed. So in that sense, he died in solidarity with us. And I suppose certainly you can see he died for us, but it doesn't mean that he took a hit from God. It wasn't God's intention to say, "Some's got to pay for this." It's the evolution of human injustice as well as the evolution of the Spirit of God in Jesus confronting injustice. In addition to Don Melder, you speak of a number of other individuals who I think were living out or living into this emerging biblical vision that you speak about injustice rising. And one of them is Archbishop Oscar Romero, Vels Salvador. You want to share that story because it's such a powerful story in the willingness of someone to serve the gospel faithfully in a way that perhaps a lot of people don't even spend their time thinking about these days? That's right. Don Melder, Kamara is one example, but you're exactly right. Oscar Romero was a profound example of someone who moved in his own life from being a very obedient follower of the gospel, but also an obedient follower of the church in terms of its basic rules to becoming someone who really confronted justice because as he was named the Archbishop of San Salvador, he was still pretty much of a churchman, but he began to recognize the tremendous amount of injustice and poverty in El Salvador and in Central America in general, and his own experience began to change profoundly, and he began to speak out against injustice, particularly when one of his own very close priest friends who was in solidarity with the poor was put to death by right-wing death squads, many of whom were being protected and supported by the United States of America at that time, and so he began to do his preaching on radio. They shut down some of the radio stations, and then there was a station in Honduras that picked it up and broadcast it to the rest of Central America, and in one of his last radio broadcast sermons and homilies, he said, "You cannot kill the voice of justice." And the next day while he was celebrating Mass, celebrating Eucharist, he was shot dead at the altar, and I think he represents someone who came from that understanding of sin as something individual and personal and follow the rules, but he also recognized that there's a deeper truth in the gospel, a deeper mandate, the option for the poor that we are fundamentally called to give our lives for. And for me, he's a tremendous example of someone that stands for the emerging understanding of justice. My understanding is that as a force, the early Christian church was pacifist, that it was anti-war, that at a certain point, if you were in the military and you wanted to join the church, maybe you had to give it up, but if you were in and you joined the military, you'd get kicked out, something like that. It was a very strong part of the first three centuries, let's say, of Christianity. Is that what you're taught? Is that what all priests and other religious people learn about the early church? I think we're all taught that. I don't think that we all internalized that in the same way. We kind of recognized that the church, if you want to say, needed to be enculturated, and we recognized that, okay, yes, we did accommodate somewhat to the post-constantinian time. The church began to imitate the Byzantine Roman Empire, not only in terms of structures and buildings and the way they did governance, but they also began to imitate this emerging sense of the just law theory. You're correct. In the first three centuries, for the most part, Christians stood up against the Roman understanding of war. They stood up against the automatic assumption that if you disagree with someone, you go to retributive justice or to vengeance to carry out your justice for them, getting our way in a just way. And so then when Constantine came in, and some people, I guess, have seen it as the church selling out to Empire, I think it's certainly a balance that we've had throughout history. Can you be actually for God and for country? Yes, you can. I think it's a balance. I think that the faith shapes and forms and confronts the culture that's going on right now at many different levels. I believe in the profound role of religion as it stands over and against the dominant culture often. For instance, today, if you look at what's going on in both the presidential campaigns that are going on at present time, the main issues that are not being mentioned are larger issues, like poverty, like the environment, like justice underneath it all. And also just the whole issue as you brought up of using war as the automatic first step to try to resolve things rather than finding other means of dialogue. So I think that on the one hand, faith informs, confronts, and shapes culture, but sometimes we forget that it also works the other way. That the dominant civil culture can influence, shape, and form the understanding of culture so that you get a kind of civil religion after a while. I remember when I was studying in Europe, going to Greece at the time the military dictatorship took over. It happened to be the Orthodox celebration of Easter, and I was utterly amazed as we were going in the taxi through the main streets. There was a big parade, it was the Easter parade, and at the front of it was the cross and the Easter candle, and right behind it were all the tanks, and all the military armament and the generals, and then the Orthodox clergy. And there was a big sign that everyone was carrying, and it was on all the buses too, and it said Christos Anastace, ethos Anastace. Christ has risen, the state has risen, and I saw there that kind of fusion of a civil religion that can happen in any one of our cases in any country in the world. And your reaction to that is that that's a bad equation? Yeah, it's a very bad equation, because when you look at the Gospels, when Jesus is confronted by Pilate in the Gospel of John, and Pilate says, "Are you the king of the Jews?" Jesus says, "Well, that's your word." And then he says, "My kingdom is not of this world." Now, what's very interesting is we have tended to interpret that to me. The kingdom of heaven is up there, out there in the next life, and that's what Jesus was saying. But that would contradict everything else that Jesus says in the Gospels about the kingdom being here and now, the kingdom being a force of God's unconditional love and solidarity and justice breaking into the world now in the most ordinary of circumstances for everyone. It's an inclusive thing. That would contradict that. I think what Jesus was saying was, "My kingdom is not of your world. It is not of the world of dominance, of power, of violence, and of oppression." But we have interpreted that very differently over the centuries. If you just tuned in, we're speaking with John Heagle, author of "Justice Rising, the Emerging Biblical Vision." He's Catholic priest working as part of therapy and renewal associates out in Oregon. I heard him speaking here in Eau Claire, Wisconsin this past month when he was the keynote speaker at Jonah conference. That's why I invited him to be here today for "Spirit in Action," which is, of course, a Northern Spirit radio production. I'm your host, Mark Helpsmeet. Our website is, northernspiritradio.org. On there, you can get more than seven years of our programs. You can listen to and download. You can attach up to our RSS feed. You can get us via iTunes. You can leave comments, and we do love to hear from you. Make this conversation two-way, and you can leave donations. We do need your help, so please join us by going to northernspiritradio.org and putting in your two cents worth. Again, we're speaking with John Heagle. Catholic priest, who's been working as a psychotherapist for a number of years, but also doing his justice work through writing. I assume there's other ways that you also do your justice work. John, do you get to go out and do hands-on justice work as well as writing about it? I do. The primary work that I've been doing in terms of justice is in relationship to domestic violence, to sexual abuse systems. I was just at a summit in April in Chicago of 20 people from around the country with a group that is organized for re-issuing of the Violence Against Women Act, which has not been reissued. I was at that particular conference looking at the systems that make possible the continuation of violence against women, particularly obviously in the form of domestic violence and sexual abuse, and the whole culture of misogyny, the whole culture that degrades and objectifies and takes away the internal dignity and strength of women. That's one whole area. I'm also moving into working with a group from Boston called Safe Havens, dedicated to confronting violence and abuse of elders in our culture. Wow, there's so much that you're doing. I have to ask you a question, and I know it's a somewhat difficult one, but in terms of the approach to women, I'm of at least two minds about the Catholic Church. And again, I was raised Catholic, and I actually had a very good experience of it. I counted as an important contributor to who I am today, and something I value. And yet, I recognize that in the Catholic Church, there's institutionalized kind of a second-class system for women that they are not allowed to be priests. Most Catholics do not accept that. And that on the other hand, there is what one might call the cult of Mary, or the following of Mary, where women are in some ways, right up there, right next to Jesus in Heaven. So I've seen it and thought of it two different ways within the Catholic religion. What's your take on that? Well, I think what you're describing, Mark, is on one level, very much on target. On the one hand, we exalt women. We put them on a pedestal in terms of having as the metaphor and icon model of that, the Blessed Virgin Mary. But on the other hand, we keep women themselves in a somewhat secondary position. And I'm not speaking here even directly of women's ordination and that whole issue. We could recognize and have women leadership in the Catholic Church even without ordination, but that's not happening. And the courses that I teach at Seattle University, it's an ecumenical school. I just came back last night from teaching there. There are 26 students and 11 different denominations. And even in those denominations where they allow women to be ordained, women are still second-class citizens. So this is beyond a religious issue, it's a cultural issue. But it does take on, I think, some significance in terms of my own Catholic tradition. I deeply love my Catholic tradition because of its sacramental and incarnational and communal and mystical roots. And I think it really does honor women, but it honors them sometimes in this notion of complementarity. What I mean by complementarity is that sometimes churches teaching is that, yes, women are equal, but they have a distinctly different role than men. Men have this sort of traditional role of leadership and authority, and women are to be the kind of models of submission like Mary was and models of obedience like Mary was. Whereas I think a lot of people today are seeing that there's a lot of cultural overlay on that, that Mary may not have been the submissive little girl that we tend to make her look like, that she may also been a fierce prophet in her own right. We do when we retell these stories from the Bible, we do put our own cultural overlay on them, as you say. One of the things that I was asked just a month or two ago, and I'd appreciate your input on John, is back in mid-1600s, that's when Quakers originated, up comes George Fox, this upstart reacting as the Church of England, and going a very different way. And one of the things they did from the early days was to recognize women as equal ministers, which we don't have a password where you get hired to do that, but still in terms of conveying the word of God, equal, and they should be treated as equals. And this is so out of step with the culture of the time, the question that was raised to me was, what gave them the force, the motivation to do this? Is this something that's been available for tapping all through the way, or is this just an aberration of the human mind that someone came up with the idea that women were equal when the culture said totally otherwise? Well, first of all, I think you're very correct in terms of one of the things I've always admired about the Quaker tradition, the meeting of friends. My grandfather on my mother's side was actually born and raised a Quaker from Pennsylvania by way of Indiana and then Wisconsin. I can remember when I began to study the friends and to study the history of Quakerism, one of the things I noticed about your community is that you've always kind of been a one step ahead of or right at the edge. The example you're using of how women became honored at a time when it was very clearly a patriarchal structure in society. And yet they were right there. I think there's kind of a spirit of shared, reflective, spiritual discernment that goes on in the Quaker community that I deeply respect. For instance, not only just in terms of, as you say at the beginning, where women came to be recognized as equal partners spiritually and in the community, but for instance, even with the whole issue around the abolition of slavery, the Quakers were out ahead of the curve again. They looked at that issue, they discerned it, they talked about it, they prayed about it obviously and came to that very clear decision that this is something wrong. And they became one of the leading spiritual communities, if not the leading spiritual community, around the whole abolition of slavery. So I'm not exactly sure what that secret is, but I think it has to do a lot with recognizing that the spirit of God is not necessarily the spirit of the culture. And how to discern what needs to be confronted in the culture from the point of view of the gospel and authentic justice versus sometimes how we emphasize more structure, order, rules, or dogma teaching rather than what would be the core central ethical value, I think, of almost all spiritual traditions, which is compassion. And somehow or another, the friends have always known that. Or maybe it's just an accident, who knows. On the other hand, I would mention that within the Catholic Church, and one of the things that you talk about injustice rising, the emerging biblical vision, is you talk about liberation theology, which in a way I see as that same kind of opening happening within Catholic Church and other Christian communities as well. And something set the stage for the people to transcend their culture. Is that maybe a good parallel? Does that look to you at all similar? Yes, I think there's a very strong parallel in what you're saying. I'm profoundly proud of the social justice teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. It took us a while to come to that out of the 19th century, because for a long time, I think we were somewhat, if you want to use the term captive of the monarchy vision of the European nations at the time. But from the late 19th century, and certainly in the 20th century, all the way through the teaching of the Catholic Church on social justice is powerful, strong, consistent, and prophetic. The difficulty is that it is also one of the best kept secrets in terms of people actually preaching it or teaching it. You don't hear a lot of sermons on social justice. You hear some, but a lot of priests and a lot of us are someone hesitant to do so because we're going to get a lot of pushback from people. Is it perhaps? And I read a wonderful fictional book that talked about it. What if the pope was all of a sudden gifted as a prophet? And what the book made out as a conflict is there's an institutional role that you are carrying on whenever you're part of such a hierarchy of such an organization. And prophecy tends to go to be no respecter of organizations. It's like, here's what you're going to do. You're going to walk and go and do this. And I think that conflict is a really hard one. I think maybe that's one of the reasons Quakers have stayed a little bit beyond the curve is because we don't have hierarchy or organization to the same degree. And maybe it happens stance that it worked out this way, but I think that being freed of organizational responsibilities leads one to be free to follow the winds of spirit. Right. I do think, however, that within the institution, as you're pointing out also, there are people as individuals who do not allow the institution to define them. They help define or describe or shape the institution. If you look back over the history of the churches, but specifically in my case, of course, my own tradition, the Roman Catholic Church, yes, there have been a lot of emphasis on the institution on what I would call the office dimension of Catholicism, which is also true of you look back at the Hebrew times in terms of Hebrew priesthood. The priesthood was always that which kept the tradition. It handed on what was most valuable. It kept it consistent. It kept it and ordered, handed on the vision of the faith. It handed on the ritual. It handed on the ethical mandates of the tradition that they carried and kept that within a kind of structure. I mean, institution comes from the Latin word in star, which means to make stand, to give it stability, to give it strength. So institutions are important. But what happens always is that in addition to the office or the institution, you also have to have another dynamic, and that's the prophetic role. Prophecy is not so much about the future. It's not for telling things. It's confronting the present. And prophets called priesthood back to, well, what's the covenant about? What's the essence? What's the core reality here that we have to recognize? As Amos and the other prophets would say to the priest, you've allowed religion to become simply superficial, external. What God wants is not more sacrifice. God wants your heart. God wants justice. God wants the poor to be cared for and taken care of. It sounds like you might be describing there what might be the job description for a director of office of justice and peace. Do they have that written up? What are you supposed to do in that office? Well, it's interesting how at the time, as you mentioned before, at the time of liberation theology, and right after the Second Vatican Council 50 years ago, for the first 20 years, there was a strong emphasis in trying to implement and embody those social justice teachings. And even in the United States, two very significant pastoral letters from the American bishops, one in economics and another one on peace, were issued in a very collaborative, consultative manner. That's almost like that's ancient history now. We don't do much dialogue or consultation. It's pretty much from the top down once again now. And I think that's a very unfortunate rule because many of the offices of justice and peace have morphed into or changed into something more just general kind of social services experience. They still take on, in many ways, a prophetic role to stand up to justice and peace issues, but it's not the same thing. I think the control issues become much more strong. Let's also talk a little bit about just war. Now, again, I'm Quaker and there's no rule about what Quakers have to believe, but one of the things that's very common in Quaker circles is what some people describe as pacifism. Personally, very dubious of any war and the claims that some of them are just wars. You obviously have studied just war and you also know about Ronald Neiber and what he talks about the reality of how we deal with that. You speak about this in the book, of course. And again, the book is Justice Rising, The Emerging Biblical Vision by John Heagle. Can you, from what you've learned about just war, identify any just wars? That's a very difficult question to answer. I think probably most people would say that, well, there's two dimensions to just war theory. One has to do with the criteria. The first is establish whether or not it is a just war. Do you have the right to go to war? And the second is establishing what's called the use in bellow or the right conduct within the war. So there's kind of two dimensions to it. And probably the last authentic just war in terms of the first criterion would have been the Second World War with the Nazi invasion of Europe and all of that. But even there, once you get into the issues of how it was actually carried out, the firebombing of Dresden and all that went with that, and even the question of what happened then in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was that a just conduct of the war? That's highly questionable. So, in other words, even if there was the proper motivation, the other part, I don't know how one lives up to the just conduct of war because it so goes against our inner teachings. You know, we don't kill people, right? We're all brothers and sisters in Christ. So, as I told you earlier and just in another week or two, I believe I'll have Rita Nakashima Brock on this program speaking about moral injury from war. Something that is only newly recognized by our military, but which I find so amazing that it hasn't been recognized before. When we go to war and we violate our deeply held moral precepts in the service of our government, we may recognize that there's a good end, but when that runs up against what we've been taught all our lives in terms of not killing and having compassion, what that does to us. I think that we have to remember that the just war theory was developed at the time of early feudalism in which war really was a limited kind of thing. You're talking about swords and spears and you could limit it somewhat. Even then, Thomas Aquinas 900 years after St. Augustine, who was first in terms of the Christian perspective, gave voice to the early version of just war theory. Thomas Aquinas says that war must occur for good and just purpose rather than for self gain or as an exercise of power. And that's the first principle. Well, in today's world, how do we determine that? That's a very difficult thing. You said, secondly, that the just war must be waged by a properly instituted authority such as the state. Once again, I mean, I am not a pacifist in a theoretical total sense of the word. I would recognize that there may be times even though I wouldn't know exactly what those would be in which a country could go to war to protect its citizens or to protect the innocent in other people's countries where in some kind of intervention would be necessary helpful and appropriate for the sake of justice. But I think that often in our culture, whoever wins, a third party is already wanted. It's called the military industrial security state. We are so committed to the sense that we'll cut just about everything. We won't not truly cut the military budget. We have this great sense of fear that we have to do everything to protect ourselves. And that's the primary priority. And so it's going to be very difficult to talk about just wars in that setting and in that circumstance. You mentioned earlier, John, that there's not a lot of sermons about this peace and justice stuff from the pulpit. That isn't what we hear. I have the sense, and I may be wrong because I don't actually go out and sit in these different congregations regularly. But I have the sense that there's a number of fundamentalists or evangelical churches where folks are talking about the blood of Christ, and maybe they're talking about getting out there opposing abortion or some other in the political domain. But I don't have the sense of them talking about, "Well, let's go out there and war." I do think they're probably talking about how do we care for the poor. They do. So what's your sense? What do we need so that the full range of justice rising is happening weekly from a lot of pulpits throughout the country? Is that appropriate? Would that be appropriate? I think not only is it appropriate, I think it is a mandate and very necessary that we would take that more prophetic stance. And that would be to speak of justice and the protection of life on all levels from natural birth to natural death. I remember when I was a pastor at one time that we had a program for our youth studying during Lent, the Sermon on the Month, the Beatitudes. But one particular Wednesday night they studied, "Blessed those who hunger and thirst for justice and blessed are the peacemakers." And we had a handout that we sent home with them to also share with their families and have a discussion. And the next morning a very angry parent of father came to me with a handout from the night before, and he threw it on my desk and he said, "I don't want my kid studying this stuff. You teach him the Ten Commandments and the Laws of the Church, and that's enough." I said, "I don't want my kid studying this stuff because it will mess up his mind." Later on I was remembering that and I said, "You know, he's probably right. In our culture to teach the Beatitudes will mess up your mind in terms of the cultural assumptions and values and priorities that are held up." So I recognized that a lot of parents want the best for the children. They want them to succeed financially and economically in our culture. So I understood his perspective, but it's as though what's the really long term good? What's the real self-interest for the human community? It has to be beyond just, "Are my children going to be okay?" The issues of the environment, the issues of poverty globally. Ultimately, that's all of our interest. As the question arises in almost every political campaign, "Are you better off today than you were four years ago?" Well, what about asking the question, "Is the environment better off? Is humanity better off?" Because ultimately, we are all in this together. And I think the issues of why we got to speak more about justice at all levels and the protection of life and the ultimate experience of seeking authentic forms of justice and peacemaking, that becomes a priority that's going to take a leap of consciousness beyond any political party and beyond anyone who happens to win the next election. And one of the factors in terms of religious belief that makes a difference here is if we believe that all the good folks will be raptured up into heaven and the end times will be fought out with the destruction of the world in the process. If you believe that's imminent, then there's no reason to work on improving or protecting the world. And there was the Secretary of Interior under Ronald Reagan, James Watt, who said just that, that we might as well get rid of our national parks because Jesus is coming back at any moment. We don't have to preserve them for future generations. Obviously, if you're working from that set of beliefs as opposed to what you were talking about, John, where we're going to be transformed and we're going to live into the Peaceable Kingdom, that totally changes how we approach our work in this world. And I think that the balance between those of us pinning all our hopes on the rapture and those of us trying to live into the Peaceable Kingdom on Earth, I think that there's a tenuous balance in our society. It's not only a tenuous balance, it's a polarizing experience because, as you point out, even though, I don't know the exact number, but there's at least 25 million fundamentalist Christians in the United States who believe that the world is going to end soon. And it's exactly, as you say, I remember reading Dwight Moody back in the late 19th century, who was a great biblical scholar and one who really emphasized the importance of knowing the Bible and was a fundamentalist, literalist interpretation of the Bible. He said, speaking of the end time, he once asked his congregation, why polished the brass on a sinking ship? I mean, it's the same sort of thing that James Watt or others have said is that if the world is really going to end, then why should we even worry about trying to preserve our environment? Why should we work for overcoming poverty or war? I think that becomes a very irresponsible kind of stance. In fact, there are some Christians who actually, instead of working for peace, are actually working to create greater division in the Middle East because they believe that that's where Armageddon is going to take place. It's a very painful reality for me to see that there's a one whole group of deeply believing people who want us to prepare to destroy the earth and pay for it with our taxes. It's a really frightening experience for me rather than looking at, as you say so well, the kind of the emerging, peaceable kingdom that we are to work for. Jesus says, may your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven? So it's not either or, it's both and that we're talking about. Pie in the sky and pie on earth. Right, something, some kind of a transformation. I think maybe the second coming may not be an apocalyptic event or some great cataclysmic disaster. The second coming may be a journey that we have to make of somehow allowing the spirit of God to transform our lives into being more peaceable, more peace-making and justice-creating human beings. I want to end the interview by asking you about one quotation you shared early on in the book. It was very striking, I read it and I said, I don't recall running into that verse in that same format, and so I had to go and look it up in a number of different translations of the Bible. Yours is from JB Phillips translation, and it's for Romans 819 in the revised standard version, they say, for the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God, but the version that you had, maybe you can just off the top of your head, can you pop it out? Right off the top of my head, the JB Phillips translation I think says, all creation is standing on tiptoe waiting for the sons and daughters of God to come into their own. Now that's not a literal translation at all, it's a poetic translation, but for me it captures the vision that Paul was really talking about, because the setting there, Paul is talking, that's chapter 8 of Romans. Paul says, all creation is groaning in one great act of giving birth, and we too groan inwardly as the Spirit tries to come to fruition in our lives, and then he has this other segment about all creation is waiting somehow for us to step up to the plate if you want to put it more popularly. Well, it's great that you're calling us to step up to the plate. I want to remind people we've been speaking with John Heagle, Catholic priest currently located over in Oregon, works with therapy and renewal associates. He's worked in parishes, particularly in the Midwest here before that, and his latest book is Justice Rising, The Emerging Biblical Vision. I didn't say nearly all of your resume, John, it's a great resume, and I'm honored to have met you, have had you speaking at the Jonah banquet here, and I'm so thankful that you came today to join me for Spirit in Action. You are most welcome, it's been a privilege. The theme music for this program is Turning of the World, performed by Sarah Thompson. This Spirit in Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along, and our lives will feel the echo of our healing. (upbeat music)