I would like to propose that some part of our faculty meet toward forging a collective theological statement of our Christian faith that speaks to the crises of our times. I know we are busy and feeling end-of-academic-year pressures. But I want to ask about the possibility of our coming up with some collective expression as faculty, before I just go about my usual individual writing and publishing on these matters as I have been doing. Forging public positions—as institutions—is often crucial for shaping outcomes that are  just or unjust, particularly in a time like ours when a government flexes a new authoritarianism and ramps up exploitation of the poor and vulnerable at home and abroad. Please reach out by email if you are at all interested in talking about this. The collective statement would address some configuration of the following crises:

1. The consensus among reputable human rights and international law organizations that U.S.- and European-backed Israel continues to commit genocide in Gaza, while Israel also increases its ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the West Bank.

2. Within the United States, the erosion of free speech, the targeting of immigrants, the austerity programs and budget cuts that abandon America’s poor, increasing repression of non-conforming gendered communities, and more virulent white supremacism powered by resurgent fascism and intensifying corporate rule.

3. Increasing antisemitism and Islamophobia, accompanied by a Christian supremacy that is supersessionist and theocratic, often sacralizing the U.S. as Christian nation.

4. The acceleration abroad of a corporate and militarily-secured, U.S imperial geopolitics, that seeks to quash decolonial advances and aspirations of “darker nations”—in Gaza but also today in Haiti, Colombia, Sudan, Congo, Myanmar, and indigenous lands everywhere.

5. The ever-more threatening signs of earth’s ecological collapse, steadily caused by powerful nations’ current renewals of fossil-fuel industries and mining, the progressing climate change, and accompanying biodiversity loss.

While each of these above challenges should be explicitly mentioned in our collective statement (and I am open to naming these challenges differently), it would be forthrightly Christian. It would be framed and permeated by our core beliefs about who we see to be Jesus Christ, God, the Holy Spirit and what are the faithful practices of churches today. What and where is “salvation” now?

I know, of course, that our views vary about just what are the crises at hand. Certainly it is true, also, that our theologies are often irreconcilably different from one faculty member to another. But seriously? Amid the serious crises upon us now, we cannot forge some kind of faith statement—one that might bridge between PTS’s mission statement and what is demanded of us as Christians now?  I’m not calling for something as formal as a status confessionis document. Or maybe I am. But do we not need something beyond institutional silence in this hour?  Yes, agreed, we should not risk our vulnerable members in this community. Yes, we need to be proactive in protecting them.

I also recognize that our institution is trying to fly “low under the radar.” We are being encouraged to not “be splashy” with convictions that might draw the attention of  a currently hostile and proactive federal government.  I increasingly, however, find myself questioning the advisability of that logic—even for guarding the safety of those who may be most vulnerable at PTS. Our best “protection,” I suggest, is to wear a prophetic Christian faith more on our sleeves, not simply to let that kind of faith be assumed in the background, buried in our mission statement, chapel observances, or classrooms. Our faith needs to be affirmed publicly to challenge freshly the powers of the times.  Our most effective “protection” may be our steadfastness in advocating and practicing, now, both peace and justice. In more traditional and Pauline terms, maybe now is the time to find our power by being  “not ashamed of the Gospel.”