say: ‘This should not and must not go on’ [. . .] When we allow (the) Christian factor to play in human experience, particularly in contrast experiences whence the new moral imperatives spring forth, it becomes clear that the protest prompted by negative experiences (‘this cannot go on’) is also the expression of the firm hope that things can be done differently must improve and will get better through our commitment. The prophetic voice that rises from the contrast-experience is therefore protest, hope-inspiring promise and historical initiative [. . .] what makes the protest and the historical decision possible is the actual presence of this hope, for, without it, the negative experience would not prompt the contrast-experience and the protest [. . .] it is only when people become aware of the fact that a better existence than the ‘established’ one is possible and indeed seen as realizable that protest appears and the need for historical decisions is sensed. Because of the continuity in man’s consciousness, where preflexive experience and reflective analysis meet in a complex unity, we can roughly distinguish two phases in these contrast experiences: first, that of the negative experience itself [. . .] where the moral demand for changes and improvements develops [. . .] secondly, the phase where the message of the Gospel matures through a combination of theology and the scientific analysis of a particular situation into a responsible and more concrete plan of social and political action.27
There is also the well-known and frequently cited confessional and professing prayer rooted in Reinhold Niebuhr’s theology and practice of ministry. It is really a praxis evolving from years of urban ministry, teaching of social ethics, circuit riding in the university and social justice networks, and organizing of social action journals to give voice to actual fellowships for expressing the need for and resources of change (see Chapter 5). Of all the Niebuhr prayers, it is the original grace-based serenity prayer that invites a full study. It integrates the combination of realism and hope and evokes the need to nurture and practice a faithful public-prophetic witness by way of opting for justice prayerfully. Thus: “O God, grant us the grace to accept with serenity the things we cannot change; the courage to change the things we ought to; and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.”28
Anticipating later elaborations, there are three key distinctions of this original version of the prayer to note. It is in the first person plural, not merely “me”; it names the courage to change to be normative, not content to change merely what can be; and finally, it invites and includes a fourth theme of “grace.” Compared to the popular version the prayer, this version is more inclusive, normative, and rooted in a specific acknowledgement of the presence of God’s gift of grace. Importantly, it means that this prayer embodies that creative balance of realism and hope, and the latter’s affinity with and need for the helpmate of justice. Not surprisingly, the author of the prayer, Niebuhr, is the key theologian this book summons to unpack the depth and range of the meaning of justice and its implications for urban ministry.
Framing Urban Ministry via a Triad: Grounded, Hopeful Realism
The purpose of naming realism and hope is for their interpretive—heuristic—value. Urban ministries could tidily be summarized in terms of a singular, dominant purpose and mission; that is, the biblical term of “shalom” or the oft-cited prophetic triad of Micah 6:8 that a ministry is called to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly or modestly with thy God.29 My own United Church of Canada denomination, by way of its B.C. Conference, cites three chief mission purposes, the third of which illustrates a major perspective. Thus a faithful public witness refers to loving one’s neighbor along with God and the self—in addition to rendering effective leadership and maintaining healthy congregations and ministries.30 When “public” is aptly combined with “prophetic” to read a “faithful, public, and prophetic ministry”, then an urban ministry is commissioned with a wide and deep mandate pithily representative of Micah’s triad.
However, a hopeful realism speaks to the need to combine analysis with mission, to leaven the analysis of the forces and pressures of city life with the patterns and processes of doing justice and praying for it, and to balance this with hope. The heuristic value of the term “hopeful realism” is in providing guidelines as to what to look for in a ministry in the city. It dovetails with what response ethics employs in its general disposition to exercising responsible ministry—disposition along with responsibility, being the way that John Bennett applies the concept of realism to societal ministry and social ethics.31 Hence, a ministry asks what is going on in this situation; then, what are the responses already being made by other ministries or agencies; and finally, what is discerned to be a pertinent or fitting response.32 The importance of realism in the first question is to help assure that the ministry situation is honestly and adequately assessed and continually so. Because self-interests and power are at play in virtually any ministry situation and that of its actors or board members, analysis needs to be shrewd and subject to a checks and balances to minimize the undue or unfair influence of interest. The importance of realism in response to the second question (fitting responses of urban ministries to their situations) twins with and builds on discerning the presence of hope in ministry situations and the “process (and processes) by which to facilitate hope.” Pamela McCarroll aptly asserts these two guides based on her descriptive definition of hope. To wit, “Hope is the experience of the opening of horizons of meaning and participation in relationship to time, other human and nonhuman being, and/or the transcendent.”33
Hope counterbalances the tendency and temptation to cynicism as realism checks and counters the temptation and tendency to naïve optimism in urban ministries. Christian or theological realists have long held such tendencies in balance and sought to be aware of the temptations to veer off to one side or the other.34
Christian realism, in modern and postmodern theology, is chiefly located and reflected in Reinhold Niebuhr’s early and mature thought. How he came to the disposition or perspective of realism is elaborated later for it is instructive for urban ministry. Among others (and especially in The Niebuhr Society), John Bennett, Larry Rasmussen, Robin Lovin, and Gary Dorrien represent early and continuing lines of thought. Dorrien has written extensively of realism, especially in his several works on historical roots and trends in liberal progressive theology in the late 19th and 20th centuries—albeit, he is sometimes tempted to be dismissive of Christian realism as being anything much more than Niebuhr’s life and thought.35 The origins of these realists basically arise from disillusionment with the social gospel, painful encounters with the 1930s and 1940s when depression and world wars chastened church views of what had been thought to be optimistically possible and now, plainly, was not. Realism also arose out of disillusionment with grand schemes of viewing society and international progress, specifically with communism and its once-sweeping hopes of transforming society by combining economics with politics. Nevertheless, the enduring tenets of theological realism are attested to be: “. . . history has its tragic dimensions and human beings their finitude and sin, individuals have a capacity for fair-mindedness and selflessness which nations do not, and political and social power offer temptation and responsibility.”36
Discerning Key Elements in Urban Ministries
One could employ37 sophisticated qualitative research methods such as that of grounded theory or thematic analysis to discern what it is going on when comparing ministry cases or networks. Suffice it here to ask what leads to the very origins and formation of a dedicated ministry. It is surely out of a response to urgently felt needs or out of a long held concern
