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Responses to Professors Elizabeth Bounds, Michael G. Cartwright and Laurie Zoloth in their comments on Testing the National Covenant

Elizabeth Bounds likens the effort in my book to keep the covenantal tradition alive to the work of James Luther Adams on the subject of covenant. However, she thoughtfully notes an important difference. Adams linked covenants to voluntary communities, not to the founding of a national covenant under the Constitution of the United States. Consequently, Adams emphasized more strongly the prophetic role of covenants. Deeply committed voluntary communities were freer to criticize the dominating roles of large-scale organizations in the United States — whether the government or business corporations. In contrast, I have emphasized a covenantal element in the very formation of the government itself and therefore am less disposed to engage in prophetic criticism of the government. Bounds suggests sympathetically that a difference in political atmosphere today may account for the contrasting emphases in our work. Today, the religious/ political right, in alliance with free-marketeers, have witheringly attacked the legitimacy of government (its powers to tax and regulate) on the grounds that the marketplace is wondrously self-corrective, in need of no bumbling intrusions by government. Though the marketplace comes in for its share of criticism in my book, I have spent less time on criticizing government. Certainly, on principle, neither the government nor corporations — nor their collusions — should be spared from prophetic judgment. At the same time, it should be conceded that voluntary associations, such as religious congregations, are not entirely unfettered or blameless in their exercise of a prophetic role. Churches often depend heavily upon their members for economic support; and religious leaders, facing their congregations, politely emphasize their pastoral at the expense of their prophetic political theology, Vol. 15 No. 3, May, 2014, 264–269