[P2P-F] The CenterPlace Regional Development Strategy Part 1(April 1999)

[Michel Bauwens]

Dear Alan,

I did not get a response to this email, so I'm proceeding, thanks again for
that informative historical review!

the wiki page is here,
http://p2pfoundation.net/Exploring_the_Social_and_Economic_Dimensions_of_Mormon_Zionic_Culture

It will be published on our blog on August 4 as well,

Is there a second part, or more? for a follow-up?

Michel


On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 7:46 PM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>wrote:

> Dear Alan, great beginning for a promising series!! Very informative.
>
> I'm struggling to find a title that also makes sense for non- believers,
>
> What about: The RDLS, Zionic Theology and the Social Economy: p2p
> developments  within the Mormon Church
>
> On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 7:01 PM, <adavans at aol.com> wrote:
>
>> A couple of months ago Michel asked me to share a little bit of what is in
>> my 'theological space' that is of some relevance to a P2P economy.  I've
>> dragged my feet a bit because this piece is sectarian and sermonizing.
>> Which of course is nothing to be ashamed of because I was preaching at my
>> fellow sectarians....and asking them to sectarianize a little more!  I felt
>> then, as I do now, that sometimes the old ways, the old radical ways, really
>> are the good ways.  This said, for those not interested in theology per se,
>> the installments I am sending should be read from the perspective of
>> populist social movement. I myself am nothing if not a populist.
>> Historically members of the RLDS were engaged in populist social movements
>> and the labor movement.  Members of the RLDS Church are among the founders
>> of the CIO, United Farmers of Canada and the Cooperative Commonwealth
>> Federation.
>>
>> Some of you will probably recognize that in this period I leaned on Bishop
>> N.T. Wright as well as John Howard Yoder for a theological basis for the
>> RLDS and Mormon concepts of a 'zionic society.'
>>
>> *The CenterPlace Regional Development Strategy:Exploring the Social and
>> Economic Dimensions of Zionic Culture*
>>
>> Preface
>> "Zion" is an oft used word among us in the RLDS and "restorationist"
>> fraternities.  There are perhaps as many notions concerning Zion as there
>> are saints in the various restoration-based churches, and we can generally
>> divide them into several broad, though at times, overlapping categories.
>> Many believe Zion to be our most central "restoration distinctive" and
>> define it in terms of the Gathering, the Storehouse and the "financial" Law
>> of Consecration and Stewardship.  Others see Zion as an inspirational and
>> useful symbol of hope which has some type of essence while its actual
>> content changes to meet the needs of a changing world.  Still others see
>> Zion as a quaint 19th century Mormon notion with no significance to us
>> beyond that of historical curiosity and sentimentality.
>>
>> I fall predominantly into the first school thought mentioned above, and
>> subdominantly into the second. Yes, Zion is a potently powerful and creative
>> symbol, and more than that, Zion is rooted in a historical revelatory
>> mandate to the Church to build the Kingdom of God here upon this Earth.
>> Consequenty, I look to renewal of our Zion-building impulse and energy.  And
>> despite what many of the saints may characterize as a decades-long dry-spell
>> brought on by apathy and dissension at best, or flirtation with the liberal
>> protestant theologies or even outright apostasy at worst, still I see signs
>> of the coming renewal of zionic endeavor both within the RLDS Church and
>> within civil society at large.
>>
>> The RLDS Church as an institution embraces peace and justice. "Communities
>> of Joy" builds on relationships to foster community in the Church.  New
>> energy is going into community-based social and economic development due to
>> the efforts of such people as Gary Logan (Kansas City Stake President),
>> pastors such as Cathy Striley (St. Louis) and the impressive number of RLDS
>> ministers associated with SCUPE. All of these provide wide avenues for
>> zionic endeavor, and I believe tha both the RLDS Church and the larger
>> society are ready and willing to hear again "the glad tidings of Zion."
>>
>> Here in North America, people are searching for meaning, connectedness,
>> and a wholeness that can't be found in consumer culture, globalization, and
>> the politics of conservative vs. liberal, left vs. right. A cursory survey
>> of books at your local Barnes and Noble bookstore will reveal such titles as
>> "The Soul of Politics", "The Politics of Meaning", and even "the politics of
>> meaning, life and love" and othe such terms not normally associated with
>> electoral politics.  It's not that somehow has discovered a new gimmick to
>> get votes. That's been left to the cynical partisan machines tha are
>> "fighting" for the "soul of America."  No, a politics of the soul, a
>> politics of meaning, is about a new kind of politics, a politics that
>> transcends the false choices we are presented with betwixt left and right,
>> transcending even the electoral process itself.  It's a politics of civil
>> society that is deeper and wider than mere electoral politics,a politics
>> that dwells where people really live. It's about civil organizaiton and
>> civil development as opposed to mere legislation and lobbying. It engages
>> the electoral process occasionally, and on community social and economic
>> development for the long-term.
>>
>> The CenterPlace Regional Development Strategy builds on this type of
>> politics. It seeks answers to the question of what type of systems and
>> structures, organizations and operations, processes and "products" are
>> needed to enable participation in and fulfillment of a Zionic Culture.  It
>> involves a project proposal tha climaxes in the CenterPlace Communty
>> Village."  The "village" is where we bring powerful and existing models
>> together, such as that of the Mondragon Cooperatives, Italian Flexible
>> Manufacturing Networks, Community Land Trusts and countervailing banking
>> arrangements.  The village is itself a process and a product of its
>> participants.  In other words,  "we build the road as we travel."
>>
>> The installment this weekend will be titled "Toward a Theology of Zion."
>> Just as the RLDS Church was exploring liberal protestant theologies as old
>> as that of the Niebuhr brothers, a revolution was brewing in biblical
>> scholarship. "Biblical Realists" found that the central doctrine of the
>> Reformation, "justification by fatih", was not actually central to the
>> thinking of the Apostle Paul, upon whom the Reformation relied. What they
>> found was that the "thrones, principalities, and powers" are central to the
>> Paul's though, because they are the most important themes of his writing:
>> Jesus' role as Creator(Collosians 1:15-17), Jesus' victory on the cross
>> (Collosians 2:13-15) and the purpose of the Church (Ephesians 3:9-11). By
>> seeing that the "powers" doctrine is central to Paul's thought we find that
>> salvation by grace through faith, justification by fatih, reconciliation and
>> other terms fall into place and that the terms used in Ephesians 2 and 3,
>> "church", "fellowship" and "commonwealth" take on sharper and deeper
>> meanings.  It also ties, by way of Ephesians 3:9-11, the "powers" firmly to
>> its Old Testament parallel, Micah 4, and thus to Zion. Zion is the doctrine
>> tha the doctrine of the powers points to, and Zion is the doctrine of
>> salvation, par excellence.
>>
>> *Part 1 Toward a Theology of Zion*
>> For over 160 years the Saints have aspired to build "Zion" with varying
>> levels of intensity from time to time. In additon to enabling some "zionic"
>> projects, the RLDS Church has occasionally reaffirmed its commitment to
>> zionic social and economic development with General Conference Resolutons
>> ("GCRs") calling for research and development of zionic communities and
>> defining the role of the Storehouse Treasury in the process.
>>
>> Many of the Saints are dissatisfied with the level of progress that has
>> been made and wonder why more resources have not been made available for
>> zionic community development.
>>
>> It could be that the reason greater momentum has not been experienced by
>> Saints engaged in zionic development is due largely to a lack of knowledge
>> concerning functioning models that could suggest concrete steps to take.
>> Fundamental misunderstandings of the Law of Consecration and Stewardship
>> have been an added impediment to progress.
>>
>> Lack of resources has certainly not been the real problem. What if the
>> RLDS Church in North America with its 200,000 or so members were a small
>> nation of its own, like Luxembourg?  How might "Statistics Zion" describe
>> our country?  GDP would exceed 5 Billion dollars.  Our ZionLand economy
>> would generate over 3 Billion dollars in wages this year [1999].  Net
>> private capital (residences, plant and equipment) would be worth 10 Billion
>> dollars or so. The value of securities held by the Saints (stocks, bonds,
>> savings, CDs and so forth) would be worth 10 Billion dollars or so as well.
>> This year, the Saints in ZionLand would invest over 900 Million dollars in
>> new homes, new business ventures and business expansion.
>>
>> We've been joined in our theological concerns by others, of  course.
>> President Frederick Madison Smith ("FMS") and other zionic stalwarts of his
>> time explored both the vast field of social economy for models and
>> theological explanation appropriate to the RLDS Church.  FMS and Bishop
>> DeLapp sensed that the answer to the question of what model to adopt or
>> design was to be found in the Law of Consecration and Stewardship. While
>> cooperatives had features that were quite laudable and went in the right
>> direction, cooperatives, they felt, didn't go far enough. Socialism, or at
>> least some schools of socialist thought, was unacceptable becasue of its
>> perceived danger to freedom and property rights.
>>
>> Nevertheless, lack of functioning models to draw from did not stop RLDS
>> Church leaders from exploring their options and determining how to at least
>> cross over that narrow way to Zion just as often as they could.
>> Experimentation was permissable as well as encouraged. FMS led the 1925
>> General Conference to adopt GCR 851, a twelve point "Program for the
>> Establishment of Zion" calling for the formation fo a "bureau of research
>> and service" and for a "determination of the order of economic
>> development."  GCR 851 was reaffirmed in the General Conference of 1956.
>>
>> GCR 977, adopted April 9, 1950 is concerned with the functions of the
>> Storehouse Treasury and represents Bishop DeLapp's thinking on that
>> particular subject. Expenses incurred by the Storehouse Treasury were to
>> include the "costs for economic and community planning" for new communities
>> as well as existing communities within stake jurisdictions, and for
>> "development of business, industrial and agricultural stewardships" in the
>> Center Place. A related GCR 1040 created a revolving fund for the
>> development fo business and industrial enterprise.
>>
>> It was during this period (roughly mid-twenties to early 50s) of zionic
>> exhortation and Zion-related GCR proliferation that a young Zion-oriented
>> intelligentsia formed.  Many of the these young educated Saints were
>> compadres at the University of Chicago, our very own "Chicago school" if you
>> will. Among them was Raymond Zinser.
>>
>> Dr. Raymond Zinser set his thoughts on the "Zionic Process" down on paper
>> in the early 1960s. His thoughts would reemerge and influence the Saints
>> later froma wholly unexpected angle. He focused on Zion as a process
>> involving a communitarian orientation, a setting for revelation, a settin in
>> which to actually demonstrate the wisdom and presence of God and His Kingdom
>> here upon this Earth. Undergirding the Zionic Process is a sacramental
>> conception of the universe, and the sanctification of our utilitarian,
>> aestetic and interpersonal lives as individuals and communities of
>> believers.
>>
>> Dr. Zinser was preaching the Zionic Process to the Saints (often
>> accompanied by Arthur Oakman), particularly to his students at Graceland
>> College during a time when the RLDS Church was tentatively exploring liberal
>> protestant theologies. A key player in that theological exploration was Dr.
>> Paul Jones, who at the time was a United Methodist theologian at St. Paul's
>> Theological School, hired by the RLDS Church to consult on the Church
>> curricula. Jones became fascinated by the RLDS heritage and tradition,
>> particularly with the doctrine of Zion and in 1980 he expressed to the Joint
>> Council his desire the heritage and tradition be retained in its
>> more-or-less sectarian purity.
>>
>> Dr. Jones, (now Father Jones, he was ordained to the priesthood fo the
>> Roman Catholic Church some years ago), has spoken to gatherings of Saints
>> since then, encouraging us to look at the doctrine of Zion with new eyes. It
>> is remarkable how closely Jone's presentations parallel both Dr.Zinser's
>> "Zionic Process" and his doctoral thesis which prescribed "resectarianizing"
>> the RLDS Church in order to renew its Zion-building capacity.
>>
>> Dr. Jones speaks of "reimaging" where Zinser talks of resectarianizing.
>> Both are critical of the "demythologizing" tendencies of liberal
>> protestantism. To Jones and Zinser both, Zion is mulitifaceted, it is the
>> Kingdom, it is a model and there is a zionic process for bringing it about
>> that is communitarian in nature. Like Zinser, Jones emphasizes the RLDS
>> functional theology and ministry, as well as continued revelation. Like
>> Zinser, Jones emphasizes the sacramental nature of the zionic process in
>> Tillich-like terms:"The goal is a culture3 where everything is symbolic for
>> the ground of being." The Storehouse function and stewardship hold
>> meaningful places in Jones' outlook as they do in Zinser's.
>>
>> The only substantial difference between Jones' and Zinser's presentations
>> has to do with "reimaging" as opposed to "resectarianizing."  Jones invites
>> us to conceive of Zion not so much as a distinctive of the "one true ch
>> urch" so much as a concept that is being restored to the Christian Church
>> as a whole.
>>
>> The work of Zinser and Jones both point to the theological task to be
>> done. They both tie the Church, Creation and Salvation quite tightly around
>> the concept of Zion, and while I'm not going to engage in this theogical
>> work with anything near the comprehensiveness that it deserves, I do want to
>> try to point the direction into which the theological effort could go.
>>
>> Since theology is the "knowledge of God" I feel it appropriate to expand
>> upon the mission of Jesus Christ ("King Jesus"). It is a truism, often heard
>> or implied the Church shares in the mission of King Jesus. I'm going to
>> continue in that vein.
>>
>> God made covenants with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob that through their seed
>> all the people of the world would be blessed. God made these covenants in
>> order to deal with the sin and alienation introduced into the Creation at
>> the Fall. Israel was to obey God and attract the nations to Zion with her
>> obedience. God promised to vindicate Israel for the suffering she would
>> icurr in the process. A survey of the Old Testament will reveal that by and
>> large Israel was hardly obedient. There in fact was only on Israelite that
>> fulfilled all the terms of the Covenant, and that was King Jesus. His
>> obedience and sacrifice has given Israel a new lease on life, especially in
>> relation to King Jesus himself, through the new body politic that King Jesus
>> organized upon this Earth, the Church, or "Body of Christ."
>>
>> King Jesus was a Jew born to a Jewish mother in a Jewish homeland which
>> was unhappily associated with the Roman Empire. Many Jews sought a
>> deliverer, a Messiah, to rescue them from their Roman and Herodian
>> oppressors. An angel revealed to the mother of King Jesus that she, a virgin
>> would give birth that expected deliverer.  She responds to the angel's
>> message as a Jew expecting national liberation. Mary's joyful response is
>> known as the "Magnificat" and is found in Luke 1:46-55.  Mary expects
>> justice and liberation to result from her son's rule and reign. Biblical
>> scholarship suggests that her response to the angel's message was what could
>> be expected of one voicing a Maccabean sentiment because her response seems
>> to be formulaic, in fact it is a key feature of many Christian liturgies to
>> this day.
>>
>> So King Jesus is born and moves through infancy to young adulthood. One
>> day he does an extraordinary thing, recorded in Luke 4:16-21. King Jesus has
>> been prepared for his ministry for 30 years and just now returned to his
>> home town of Nazareth after a Galilean tour on the heels of a personal
>> 'in-your-face' confrontation with the Devil. "And He came to Nazareth, whre
>> he had been brought up: and as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on
>> the sabbath day and stood up for to read. And there was delivered unto him
>> the book of the Prophet Esaias. And when he had opend the book he found the
>> place where was written [Isaiah 61:1-2] 'the spirit of the Lord is upon me,
>> because he hath anoined me to preach the gospel to the poor:he hath sent me
>> to heal the broken hearted, to preach deliverence to the captives, and
>> recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to
>> preach the acceptable year of the Lord...and he began to say to them 'this
>> day is ths scripture fulfilled in your ears.'  This "acceptable year of the
>> Lord" of which King Jesus spoke is knwon as the "jubilee."  The jubilee is a
>> time mandated by Mosaic Law to take place from time to time in which slaves
>> are freed, debts forgiven and land redistributed equitably among the
>> Israelites. To contemplate such an event put yourself in the place of his
>> hearers in the synagogue. King Jesus is proposing to release their slaves,
>> to redistribute their landholdings, and write-off the debts owned to them as
>> creditors.  It is a bold proclamation, with enough political overtones to
>> attract the wrath of political, economic and religious elites. The immediate
>> reaction to the King Jesus' proclamation of the Jubilee was to attempt to
>> stone him and throw him down a hillside.
>>
>> You know the rest of the story. King Jesus goes on challenging the
>> powers-the-be, Pharisees, Caiaphas, Herod, the Romans, you name it. The
>> climax of this challenge was the very crucifixion of King Jesus, a
>> crucifixion that the Apostle Paul tells us is in fact King Jesus' victory
>> over the very powers that crucified him (Collosians 2).
>>
>> Pay attention to Paul's talk concerning "thrones, principalities and
>> powers."  The thrones, principalities and powers are central to Paul's
>> worldview and he weaves the mission of King Jesus and the Church around it.
>> The powers, Paul tells us, were created by  King Jesus (Collosians 1:15-17)
>> and that they "systematize" through King Jesus.  Thus they are a part of the
>> good creation. In other passages we find those powers to oppressing us. In
>> Collosians 2, as mentioned above, King Jesus defeats the powers, the social,
>> economic and political interests that cruficied him, and so we find that
>> while the powers are a good creation, they are now fallen.
>>
>> Ephesians 3:9-11 introduces the powers to us again, this time in the
>> context of the purpose of the Church, which Paul says is to demonstrate the
>> wisdom of God on the basis of the Church's fellowship.
>>
>> Thus we find that the purpose of the Church associated with the redemption
>> of the powers. Paul, ever a good Jew commenting upon Judaism as a messianic
>> Jew and therefore offering a critique of Judaism from within, i shere saying
>> something that ties it to its parallel passage, Micah 4, where the nations
>> flow to Zion to learn of her ways, to learn war no more. Presumably because
>> Zion and the Church are modeling redemtive power, and a war, poverty and
>> racism ridden world can't help turning to those who have overcome these
>> social, political and economic perversions.
>>
>> So the powers talk ties us to Micah's Zion after all, and it joins three
>> key themes of Paul's writings, that is, the Creation, the victory of King
>> Jesus on the Cross, and the purpose of the Church. Paul further observes
>> that the Church is Israel's "successor organization" as it were (see chapte
>> 2 of Ephesians). His teaching shows us that the powers are good, they are
>> fallen and they can be redeemed, and that redemption comes through the
>> demonstration by the Church.
>>
>> The powers theme also helps us place some sharper definitions on many of
>> Paul's terms. First of all, the terms "Church", "Fellowship" and
>> "Commonwealth" are drawn from the vocabulary of Greek politics, especially
>> idealized Greek political notions. The ideal generally centered around the
>> concept of the "polis" which is often mistranslated "city-state."  The
>> idealized polis was based on the participation of the "ecclesia" or mass
>> assembly. The work of the mass assembly or ecclesia was carried out through
>> 'fellowship' or "koinonia", and the koinonia (konoi in the plural) were
>> organized to carry on ritual festivals, keep the collective memory of some
>> central myth alive, and to carry out policy.  It was a poitics not of
>> empire, but of face to face participation, the politics of the assembly, not
>> the "consul" or "senate", the politics of citi-zenship and common-wealth
>> rather than that of "constituency", the politics of fellowship rather than
>> bureaucracy, the politics of covenant rather than the politics of mere
>> tribalism.
>>
>> Knowing this, we can now consider the actual content of the words Paul
>> consistently uses to talk of the salvation process that the Church is
>> centrally involved with. A formula emerges, where
>> justification=saved=reconciled=making peace=breaking down the wall of
>> partition--that is, setting relationships right, setting them in order,
>> orienting them, "justifying" them. Not just our relationship with God, but
>> with one another, for it is predominantly through the Church that we
>> participate in communion with the Trinity, and only incidentally as
>> individuals.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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