Hopeful Realism in Urban Ministry. Barry K. Morris
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their earnest witness. I could not have conceived of this possibility of these organizations in this role as a theological student of the 1960s and 1970s. To be sure, some of us were heartily encouraged by the quasi-monastic model of the team or corporate ministry of the East Harlem Protestant Parish founders—intentionally naming their four regular disciplines of economical sharing, political involvement, residential living in Harlem, and regularly engaging in Biblical studies and corporate (versus private only) worship. This book will allude to and illustrate this by way of the Streams of Justice (SoJ) network.
Summary Conclusion
What is evident and realistic about this above survey and brief assessment are the pressures and limits of competing interests and conflicting ambitions amid scarcity of resources.83 What is hopeful are the encouraging resources of urban ministries, including their patterns and processes of interdependence which attest to the presence of that Power that bears down upon them to sustain if not to renew us, to preserve rather than slay.84 What constitutes a hopeful realism is the steadfastness of ministerial possibilities affirmed and commended, a legacy into the present era of urban ministry practices. These possibilities are held in balance by the practical requirements related to launching, maintaining, and renewing the limits of what it takes to launch, maintain, revise, renew, and revisit an urban ministry. Sin, ignorance, and finitude persist, but they need not prevail—particularly as attested by Christian or theological realism and hopeful realists in the future.
1. NBC News interview with Sander Vanocur 1967.
2. “Forced Options” is a term I first encountered in Christian realist, Roger Shinn’s writings. See Forced Options: Social Decisions for the 21st Century, 1982, 3, where he states: “A forced option, says James, is a decision that allows no escape. Any efforts to delay for long, to sit it out, to compromise indefinitely are themselves decisions—as surely as is the deliberate choice of one of the alternatives.” Shinn cites from William James’ “The Will to Believe,” 34.
3. Taylor, “Looking for God in the City” with its intentional subtitle: “A Meditation,” 8.
4. Ibid, 8. See also Fineman, “The Vulnerable Subject and The Responsive State” and “The Vulnerable Subject” with its instructive subtitle: “Anchoring Equality in the Human Condition.”
5. Niebuhr, Beyond Tragedy, 28–29.
6. Niebuhr, Nature and Destiny of Man, Vol. I, 228–40; also, Cox, On Not Leaving It to the Snake, xi–xix. See Don Grayston’s recent work, fully elaborating Merton’s experiences of the range of acedia, especially as restlessness, in “Thomas Merton and the Noonday Demon: The Camaldoli Correspondence,” Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2015.
7. See Augustine for this basic distinction and caveat. www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/s/saintaugus148531.html.
8. See Lupton Toxic Charity, 1–30 and passim.
9. See, Taylor, op. cit.
10. Merton, “Time of the End is No Room in the Inn,” 65–78.
11. See Bellett, “High School Reeling from Severe Budget Cuts: . . . Leaving Needy Students Hungry,” A10.
12. See Bonhoeffer, “The Secret of Suffering March 1938,” 291.
13. See Lynch, Images of Hope, 23–25, passim.
14. See Norris, Acedia and Me, 217–22.
15. Respectively, see Farley, The Wounding and Healing of Desire, xviii, 2; and Caputo, The Weakness of God, 36. Their contributions are duly noted also in chapter 3.
16. See Anderson, Walking the Way, 135, 246–47; Wilson, Gospel Virtues, 41, 97, 196 notes 5 and 6; Kuile, The Virtues of a Christian Realist, passim.
17. Frankl, “Finding Meaning in Difficult Times: Interview with Victor Frankl.”
18. See Frankl, “The Case for a Tragic Optimism,” 161-79.
19. See Moltmann, Theology of Hope, 21–22.
20. See I Cor. 15:26–28 and Hammarskjöld, Markings, 35.
21. See Anderson, Walking the Way, 130–32.
22. J. K. Smith, “Determined Hope: A Phenomenology of Christian Expectation,” 210, see also 225–27. Cf. McCarroll, The End of Hope–The Beginning, 24–33, for similar and necessary foundations, objects or aims, and agencies for hope, including “waiting and receptivity,” for hope to be no mere wishful thinking or shadow boxing.
23. Tillich, The Religious Situation, 116.
24. H.R. Niebuhr, 14.
25. Ottati, Hopeful Realism, 3.There are others of course, who engage realism and hope in their own disciplined ways. See Fineman’s rich descriptions of the realities of vulnerability and further, resilience as a major mark of hope in human nature and our finite and flawed institutions, “The Vulnerable Subject and The Responsive State.”
26. Ibid.
27. Schillebeeckx, God the Future of Man, 158–59, cited in Morris, The Radicalization Process, 118–19, n. 55. Cf. Schillebeeckx’s later Christ the Experience of Jesus as Lord, 713. See also The Schillebeeckx Reader, especially 18, 45, 54–59. Therein, Schreiter comments: “This (contrast experience) moment reveals the difference between what is and what ought to be or will be. The power of this moment [. . .] is in its negation of that difference; that is, moving away from what ought not to be (suffering in the present) toward what ought to be (a full sense of humanity, or humanum, in the future),” 45. See also Appendix B and Hessel, Time for Outrage Indignez-vous! especially 26–29, combining hope and resistance in fighting fascism in WW II and since. (italics added).