As we try to discern whom we would follow, hear these words from the prophet Micah: "God has told you, oh mortal, what is good and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with God?"

Stanley Hauwerwas and William Willimon open their book, Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony, with a reminiscence of how and when they knew that life in American culture had changed. It changed for them, growing up in the small towns in the South, when the movie theater opened on Sunday afternoon and evening. For Hauwerwas and Willimon, the theater's decision was a symbol that American culture will no longer automatically reinforce Christian religious practices or values. They conclude, "The Fox Theater went head to head with the church over who would provide a world view for the young." That night the Fox Theater won the opening skirmish.

Whatever our experience or religious tradition, we know that our society has changed. Pain over this dislocation continues to surface. One arena of the debate has come to be public education. The issue of prayer in public schools, for example, simply will not go away. Nostalgia often turns to anger as folks talk about why public schools can't or won't teach the religious songs of the various holidays.

Well, the facts are that this nation has become increasingly secular as that relates to our political, social and economic structures. At the same time, this nation, always a breeding ground for religious diversity and toleration, is now more religiously complex and diverse than at any time during our history. Some see this as a dangerous situation. They want to retreat into some time in the past when a mantle of religious affirmation spread peaceably over at least the veneer of the social landscape.

I see it differently. I believe that this day and the days ahead are a wonderful opportunity for practicing Christians to reassess what it means to practice our faith, to be God's people, to live lives shaped in a peculiar way—a way shaped by a cross.

What does it mean to live as a person of faith in a secular world? What does it mean to live as a faithful person in our society today? Well, I think it means, among other things, to live with an active sense of the presence of God. The pastor under whose preaching I grew up was fond of using the Biblical phrase that God is "the One in whom we live and move and have our being." God is our environment. Nowhere can we escape God's presence. In no way can we fall out of God's embrace. "Everything," to use the words of poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, "Everything is charged with the grandeur of God."

Not everyone sees this, of course. And, in fact, sometimes it is not easy to do so. Seeing ourselves living, loving, working, crying, hurting, achieving inside of the very being of God takes work. Experiencing God not simply as an Other "out there" but as the ground of our being, the very soil out of which we grow, requires instruction and practice. Frankly, that's part of the purpose of corporate worship: to be led again and again, as individuals and also as a community, into the presence of God. It is the purpose of the daily reading of Scripture and the time of private prayer. Something as simple as reading a psalm and fifteen minutes of quiet each day can help you begin or deepen your journey into the ever-presence of God.

The experience of living life on the inside of God has been expressed in perhaps a more familiar metaphor in the African-American spiritual. "He's got the whole world in His hands, you and me, everybody here, the wind, the rain, the little-bitty baby." Everything is in God's hands. But the proof is in the pudding and the crux of the matter comes down to your understanding of who this God is who holds the universe and your soul. Who is the God that you worship? This is a crucial question; indeed, it is either a life-giving or death-dealing question. As the psalmist said of those who made and worshiped deities fashioned of wood or stone or metal: "Those who make them become like them. You worship what is dead, you die. You worship the living God, and you find life in all its abundance."

The Bible is the story of the living God. It does not attempt to define or describe or prove what God is like. It simply tells a story, a long, complex story of God's love affair with one particular people which becomes the model of God's relationship with all. In the midst of the narrative, there are few summaries about who God is and what God wants from us. One of those is in Micah 6:8. "What does the Lord require of you? But to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with God."

The God whose story is told in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures is the God who defines justice and embodies kindness. There is not enough time to say all of what this means; indeed, comprehending the justice and the compassion of God is the journey of a lifetime of spiritual, faithful discipleship. But let it be said here that the justice of God is not the blindfolded figure holding the scale with which to affect an equal balance. The God whose story fills the pages of scripture has some particular favorites: they are the poor, the strangers, aliens legal and otherwise, the widows and orphans, women and children at risk.

People sometimes say that the God of the Old Testament is a God of harsh judgement whereas the compassion of God is known in the New Testament. Well, there is a lot of judgement in the Hebrew scriptures. But it is very specific: Israel comes under divine judgement, first, when it worships something (power, wealth, national security or little statues) in place of the Living God; and second, Israel is judged by how it treats the poor. Period. God's judgement is not arbitrary. It comes for those persons and societies which fail to follow the leadership of justice and kindness.

To live as Christians in our world is to be a people shaped by a story. This story begins with a God who, for love and love alone, created the universe; who, for love and love alone, kept calling them back as often as they wandered; and who, for love and love alone became one of us and showed us the shape of love by laying down his life for us, his friends. The kindness or compassion of God, always there throughout the story, is on display in the life of Jesus. Being a Christian is, quite simply and finally, to be one whose life is in a continuous process of being transformed by the compassion of Christ.

Over twenty years ago, I was a seminary intern in Little Rock, Arkansas. I became active with a group of women who wanted to start a ministry with women prisoners in the Pulaski County Jail. Most of the prisoners were there awaiting trial sometimes there without bond or unable to make bond for quite a long time. Most of these prisoners were young. Most of them were there for prostitution or shoplifting. Most of them had young children. The leader of our group came up with the idea of doing a craft project with these women every week, helping them make something which they could in turn give to their children then they came for visitors days. This was definitely not my idea of a way to do ministry, not my first choice, but it seemed to work. One day, I sat with a woman who was much more adept at this craft project than I, and she said to me, AI don't know why you do this. Why do you come down here and sit with us? I mumbled something about Christian witness and ministry. "No, no," she said. "All kind of other church groups come down here. They stand outside and they pray over us. You come in here. Why do you do that?" I wanted to say that it was our leader's idea. In the most profound sense of who our leader is, it was.

This is an exciting time to be a person of faith. It is a challenge to be a Christian in these days. May God grant us the wisdom to discern God's presence, the courage to seek to do God's justice, and the grace to let our lives be shaped by the compassion that led to a cross.

Interview with Cynthia Campbell
Interviewed by Lydia Talbot

Lydia Talbot: Dr. Cynthia Campbell, you graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Divinity School, you are president of McCormick Theological Seminary here in Chicago, and you have a leadership role in the Presbyterian church. What was it that shaped your own religious sensibility in the pluralistic culture that you talk about in your message?

Cynthia Campbell: Well, Lydia, I'd have to begin by saying that it was a church home, a church family that raised me. It takes a congregation to raise a Christian, to do a take on a familiar phrase that we've heard a lot of in the last year. And I grew up in a very strong church under a pastor whose preaching shaped my mind, excited my mind, made me want to ask religious questions about the world, about human experience. I've said in some other contexts recently, reflecting on that church experience, that when I was in high school, the Presbyterian Church was debating a new confessional statement. I can remember in the 60's, wrestling with issues of what does reconciliation in society mean? What does it mean in race relations, in political matters of war and peace, in the areas of human relationships? That was my Sunday school class, taught by lay people, taught by scientists, by attorneys, by people who believed that faith and the life of the mind went together and wanted to challenge us to think.

Talbot: Now, you are a theological scholar. I'm wondering how your dissertation work on Karl Barth from several years ago has impacted your understanding of the evolution and transformation that you talk about in your message as people of faith as always evolving transformation?

Campbell: Well, one of the things that I believe deeply is that God gave us minds and expects us to use them. And that we're every day in a process called to discern what God is about in the world and what the world demands of us. There's a kind of back and forth, a kind of dual vision of plumbing deeply into God's word and applying that to the crises of life. While I didn't focus on this aspect of Barth's work, he was very much involved with the terrible events of the mid-century in Germany and in Switzerland. He left Germany because he refused to sign a loyalty oath to the Hitler government and went back to Switzerland. And he believed deeply that his faith and that faith in God had something very much to do with these kinds of difficult choices that we're called to make in life.

Talbot: You say that the secular culture in which we live really provides people of faith to re-examine how they practice that faith. How does that inform you about the conflict in the denomination which you serve, the Presbyterian Church (USA)?

Campbell: Well, before I focus on particular conflicts, one of the things that I have come to believe deeply is that faith that is simply thought about is not faith. For all that I've just said about engaging the mind...

Talbot: Faith without action is no faith at all.

Campbell: Exactly. And action has to do with social commitments. It has to do with particular practices, practices in our families, practices in our individual lives, of times of reflection, of study, of coming together for worship, discerning together how to respond as a group to the needs of the world. If we neglect those practices, if we fail to tell the stories and sing the songs with our children, we will not be passing on the faith. Now, in the midst of all of this, Christians have notoriously, and I think for good reasons, not agreed with each other. I don't see that as a sign of lack of faith. I see that as a part of the vitality. Disagreeing about social issues is part of how we discern what God would call us to be and to do and responding to difficult issues, sexuality questions, moral issues, how best to respond to the care of the poor. Part of what the church has to do is to argue those things out and begin to discern ways to move.

Talbot: Walk us through a day in your life as President of McCormick Theological Seminary.

Campbell: Well, I wish I could say that I spent the day in the classroom with students who are following God's call. Unfortunately, I'm the support team. My job is to go to meetings and answer phone calls and make friends for the seminary so that women and men who are responding to God's call in their lives can be prepared for lives of service.

Talbot: Cynthia Campbell, you're responding so authentically to that call and we thank you for sharing it with us.

Campbell: Thanks very much.