When I recently posted some articles concerning class, the church and the Gospel, I opened up comments for discussion. Here is one comment that was posted.
“What does the scriptures say about the class system that you are talking about? In which “class” would you put say Peter, Paul, Moses etc. What “class” would you say that you in? I don’t want to be put in a box and be defined by the pigment in my skin, or how much money I have in the bank or the parents that I had. God knows me and loves me, so that is the only thing that really matters.
In this post, I thought it might be worth while responding in a little more detail to the first part of the comment. What do the Scriptures say abut the class system? It’s self evident that if you hit Bible search on the terms: class, class system, working class etc that you are going to come up with nothing. That’s because it’s rather anachronistic to attempt to read those terms back and attempt to fit Bible characters into such a system. Our present terminology relates particularly to society post the industrial revolution when a working class of manual labourers developed, working in mills and down coalmines. Industrialisation, urbanisation and the development of a working class are closely linked. This also does mean that deindustrialisation has an impact on how people identify in terms of social class and so I’m personally not unsympathetic to those raising questions about how helpful the older categories are.*
At the same time, I also think it’s pretty self-evident that unless society is completely equal, we will see some people who have much when it comes to wealth, power and connections, others who have very little if any of those things and some who will sit somewhere in the middle.
This also means that whilst Scripture may not talk in the same language as modern social analysis, it does have much to say about the same kinds of issues.
We might think for example in terms of how the Old Testament describes the history of God’s people in terms of their experience as slaves, their attempts to control others by bringing them into servitude, the impact of appointing hereditary kings, both warned about by Samuel and experienced under Solomon and Rehoboam. The Torah about how the poor and vulnerable were to be treated. Finally, the prophets are as much concerned about injustice and corruption when challenging God’s people as they are about immorality and idolatry.
In the New Testament, we might think in terms of Galatians 3:27-29
26 So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, 27 for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise
This would seem to encourage us in being blind to class/gender/ethnic distinctions. Isn’t the important thing that God loves us? Doesn’t this mean that we shouldn’t be defined by skin pigmentation or economic background. In one sense, yes. However, it is important to see from context what that sense is. The point Paul is making is that all believers are children of God, he is our heavenly father and that this also means, as per Genesis 12, that we are all Abraham’s offspring or seed, therefore beneficiaries in Christ of the covenant blessing promises. We are heirs.
You can therefore see why it is important for Paul to emphasise that certain distinctinos fall away. Could slaves and Gentiles be heirs of the covenant, children of Abraham? What about women, to some extent they might be included in the covenant but if unable to receive the covenant sign of circumcision then they might not be regarded as full heirs. Paul insists that no, gender, freedom status and ethnicity were no bar to being in Christ and if in Christ, then in the one who is “Abraham’s seed”.
This doesn’t mean that the differences just disappeared all of their own accord. First, you have distinctions that are genetically there, they don’t just go, men and women are still physically male and female, then you have differences that relate partially to genetics and partially to culture, for example I think it is fair to say that ethnic diversity reflects both genetic differences around skin pigmentation and such like, however there are also cultural differences including dress, language etc. I think we can also see in 1 Corinthians 14 and 1 Peter 3 that there are recognised, time contextualised cultural differences around dress etc relating to gender. In terms of ethnic diversity, the provision for deacons for Hellenistic Jewish believers in Acts 6 and Paul’s frequent instructions on how Jews and Gentiles are to get on in church point to recognised continuity of this. Then there are externally imposed distinctions, specifically between slave and free. Whilst the New Testament does not offer a political manifesto for abolition in wider society, it does make it clear that keeping slaves is impossible within God’s community. Masters are to treat slaves as family, slaves are to try to gain their freedom if possible but where not they are to continue faithfully in their context, knowing that their status and identity in Christ was and is secure.
It might also be helpful to consider both the Torah insistence that there will be no poor among you and also Jesus’ insistent that there will always be poor among you. The Law provided for means to ensure that whilst there would be economic differences among the people, the mechanisms would be there amongst them to ensure that all were generously provided for. This is embraced whole heartedly by the New Testament Church.
Then you come to something like 1 Corinthians where there are distinctions based on power rivalry. Paul addresses this by pointing out that they were not chosen as part of God’s people due to their power, status and wealth. Rather, God chose the weak thing for his glory. Many of the challenges in Corinth seem to link to a forgetfulness about this. The book is worth a more detailed look in helping us to understand some of the class and race issues facing the church today.
In a nutshell, I think the crucial question is whether or not our attitudes to class and the church rrun with the grain of Paul’s point that God has chosen the weak things not the powerful for his honour and glory?
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* Note. I’m not suggesting that a class structure or even ideas of class only developed post the Industrial Revolution but rather that the specific structure and terminology is a result of those developments. Prior to the Industrial Revolution you had a more feudal system, the mobility, other layers of landed gentry and peasants. Further post industrialisation despite John Major’s vision in the 1990s of a classless society, we still see class structures and I suspect will continue to see this even if the terminology becomes harder to overlay onto reality.
One might argue (and indeed I think plenty have) that the Industrial Revolution saw not only the replacement id the peasant class with an urbanised working class but also the victory of an upper middle class elite or the bourgeois over the traditional nobility/ upper class. Indeed it was sometimes observed in UK politics that working class had more cordial relationships with old school Tory psternalists than the middle class because (unlike in other contexts) it was the upper middle class and not the upper class that were seen as the real class war enemy.
Faithroots 