Farm Foundation reflects some level of acceptance of Carter’s position. So, 1 want to
share some of the primary presuppositions, perspectives and propositions that
Christian theology would bring to the table. Preacher-Iike, I have been able to work
from a fourfold alliteration: Vision, Values, Vocation and Virtual community. And,
evangelical preacher-like, I will be pressing for conversions.
Vision
A spate of recent business management books have touted the crucial
importance of an enterprise’s determining its vision or the end-state that it seeks.
Perhaps you have noted just inside the entrance to your neighborhood McDonalds
a copy of its “mission” statement. The fact that effective businesses, social
movements and people have been driven by a vision or sense of mission is not
new—just “re-discovered” and affirmed.
Writing 60 years ago, another New Haven sage, H. Richard Niebuhr, contended
that the history of U.S. America can best be understood as being driven by the
vision of the kingdom of God. In the preface of his theological classic, he sums up
this thesis in these words:
In the early period of American life, when the foundations were laid on which
we have all had to build, “kingdom of God” meant “sovereignty of God,” in the
creative period of awakening and revival it meant “reign of Christ,” and only in
the most recent period had it come to mean “kingdom on earth.” Yet it became
equally apparent that these were not simply three divergent ideas, but that
they were intimately related to one another, and that the idea of the kingdom of
God could not be expressed in terms of one of them alone (Niebuhr, p. xii).
Briefly “unpacking” this summary, let me indicate that the driving vision of the
Puritans was that God would be recognized as sovereign, both Societally and
personally. This vision lay behind and beneath the structures and practices of colonial
life. It also informed the mission of expansion westward across the continent. The
successors of the Puritans created hundreds of new communities in the old Western
Reserve and beyond, as an expression of this sense of mission. (The contemporary
Religious Right is a modem manifestation of this version of the kingdom of God.)
As with most social movements, however, the succeeding generations lacked
the commitment to the vision that characterized the first. The forms continued in
place, but the content seemed to be greatly diminished. About 1740, the first in a
series of revivals of religion swept the colonies. The focus of the kingdom of God
shifted toward the indwelling of Christ in the hearts of men and women. Christ
reigned primarily in the hearts of persons whose lives had been regenerated spiritually.
The social expression of this version of the kingdom vision was to be found in a
surging effort to create new congregations and to establish orphanages, colleges,
mission societies and later hospitals.
In turn, this version of the vision also waxed and waned. Beginning about
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