STATURE, POWER, AND EVANGELISM: THE THEOLOGICAL LEGACY OF BERNARD LOOMER

By size I mean the stature of a person's spirit the range and depth of his [or her] delight in his [or her] capacity for relationships. I mean the turn of life you can take into your being and still maintain your integrity and individuality, the intensity and variety of watch you can entertain in the unity of your being without feeling defensive or insecure. I mean the puissance of your spirit to encourage others to become freer in the disentanglement of their diversity and uniqueness. I mean the power to sustain more manifold and enriching tensions. I mean the magnanimity of bear upon to provide conditions to enable others to increase in stature.1

Mainline and progressive Christians have struggl to articulate a convincing vision and methodology of evangelism and witness. Having largely abandoned the dualistic images of saved and unsaved and heaven and hell, many mainline and progressive Christians diocese the church's mission solely in bourns of social justice and economic transformation. The wholeperson nature of salvation, moulded in the Hebraic and early Christian integration of the personal and the planetary and encompassing mind, material substance and spirit as well as social arrangements has been deemphasized in greatest in quantity mainline and progressive Christian congregations. Inviting ones to spiritual transformation is frequently an afterthought, the province of evangelical preachers and "New Age" spiritual guides.2

When the issue of evangelism approachs up in many congregational settings, the rejoinder is typically negative among mainline and progressive Christians. Their understanding of Christian witness wait ons to be dominated by images of street-corner evangelists, manipulative techniques, displacement of native someones and theological scare tactics. Still, since the faith of somebodys and congregations lives and be augmenteds by what persons believe rather than what they contradict the articulation of creative and positive theological visions and methodologies of evangelism is essential if mainline and progressive Christianity is to expand spiritually, numerically, and in its impact upon the social order.

I believe that Bernard Loomer's understanding of the relationship of stature and power provides an insightful approach to whole-person witness and evangelism'in a postmodern and pluralistic connection Although he published only a handful of articles, Loomer inspired scores of progressive and proces theologians, including this author, from one side his work as dean of the University of Chicago Divinity place of education and professor at the Graduate Theological Union.3 Indeed, Loomer is credited with first coining the confine "process theology" and, later, suggesting "process-relational theology" as the best description for this creative stream of theological reflection.

Loomer believed that theology and practice are intimately related.4 Life-giving theology requires innovative images of value and relationship that can be embodied in the practices of individual Christians and their communities of faith. This is especially veritable in the interplay of theology and evangelism, in which the strategies exerciseed by one's evangelistic program are almost entirely driven through the theological viewpoints behind them. Essential to his universal of the theological task, Loomer's positive vision of stature (or size) and relational power provides a lively and imaginative alternative to the theologies of exclusion and coercion that have motivated Christian witness to non-Christians. Loomer notes that "the single basic principle that I operate with is the principle of size. That is the category of largeness or smallness. If it is small, I am not interested in whether it is true; I do not care; it really is not worth bothering with. If the idea is fertile, if the somebody has stature, I am interested."5

Evangelism as Coercive and Unilateral Power

Loomer asserts that one's understanding of power shapes one's politics, economics, ethics, and theology.6 Loomer notes that greatest in quantity persons define power primarily as "linear in character."7 Linear, or unilateral, power is "the ability to exhibit intended or desired effects in our relationships to nature or other race More specifically, linear power is the capacity to influence, guide, adjust, manipulate, shape, mastery or transform the human or natural environment to advance one's purposes"8 Linear power is one-directional in goal and clear in object As Loomer notes, "its aim is to create the largest consequence on the other while being minimally influenced by the agency of the other."9

If power is seen in metes of shaping the other, then a person's faculty of perception of worth and meaning may well be rest in the ability to influence the other to embrace that person's faith, values, politics, or philosophical position. According to Loomer "Our more predominate power is our justification, our warrant, for our superior status and faculty of perception of importance."10 A person exercising linear power accompanys to view receptivity, mutuality, and willingness to change one's mind as signs of weakness, lack of reduce and unbelief.