I spent most of the 90s at Trinity. Invited over from the UK to run the embryonic Ph.D. in theological studies, I took on assorted responsibilities as the decade progressed—chairing the systematic theology department, and serving successively as dean for all the doctoral programs, Senior VP for Planning, and first Provost of the newly-formed university—with the gargantuan accreditation tasks involved and hands-on efforts in strategic planning and such areas as student retention and the development of a common calendar. I helped rescue the little California school that became Trinity Law School, and invented and initially led the Graduate School.
But in all these busy years it seemed to me that one effort would be perhaps the most consequent: our initiatives in bioethics. I had focused on this emerging field since the early 80s, having established the journal Ethics and Medicine in 1983. It surprised me much back in the UK that evangelical Christians seemed so little interested in anything beyond abortion, just as the wider world was shaping a multidisciplinary effort with the relations of human nature and technology at its epicenter of its agenda. When we moved stateside, surprise turned into astonishment. Here was the home of “bioethics” (it is basically an American invention) and here is also the global base of the pro-life movement. And here was a nation uniquely endowed with religious institutions and resources. Had no-one joined the dots?
I started asking questions, and as the answers came depressingly back began to strategize. How could we generate an evangelical interest in the vast emerging bioethics agenda that was proportional to the questions it was raising? So in 1992 then-President Meyer gave me the go-ahead to raise some dollars and pull together the key players. In parallel, we took a curricular initiative to put in place a concentration in the MA in Christian Thought, which then offered the only such degree option in any evangelical institution. Funds came together, half from sources that had not funded the school before, half from a very generous friend of Trinity’s. And I invited a dozen colleagues to spend a couple of days brainstorming in the Rockford Room while one of my Ph.D. students took notes. The meeting included our dear friend Harold O.J. Brown, whom I had known before my move to Trinity through his prescient interest in bioethics. Ben Mitchell was also there, to whom I had been introduced by our mutual friend Carl F.H. Henry. It included John Kilner, whose work I knew from his labors as an evangelical at the multi-faith Park Ridge Center in Chicago. Others included the Medical Issues Adviser from Focus on the Family; the leader of the Christian Medical Society (as it was then called); and a program officer from one of the foundations that had funded the meeting (and which went on to seed-fund the center), memorably in his first day on the job.
The rest, as they say, is history, though a history less encouraging than many of us had hoped. There was a groundswell at the meeting to develop a center, and to integrate it with Trinity and the bioethics MA in Christian Thought (the straight bioethics MA became one of our first initiatives in the Graduate School once it came on stream). John Kilner was open to a move from Park Ridge, and we hired him to direct the center. We sought to collaborate with various interested professional networks. And we had a twofold plan: first, to awaken the conscience of the church; and once this was in progress, to engage in the wider policy and academic debates as “bioethics” played a growing role in our national and cultural life.
What’s the verdict, 15 years on? I remained actively involved in CBHD, as chair of the advisory board and secretary to the board of directors, for around two-thirds of that time. Much good has been achieved, especially for those who have joined the conferences and institutes; and the wider work of publishing has found a market. The recent Georgetown University Press book stands out as an effort to penetrate the public culture, though it has taken much longer than I expected to begin to engage the wider community. One of the key issues that tomorrow’s CBHD may need to address is whether this task was always too ambitious, and whether a focus on a more effective catalytic role within the large community of the evangelical church might better accord with the resources and expertise at its disposal. We need to think strategically—and avoid deceiving ourselves into believing we are making an impact when all we are doing is going through the motions. 15 years on, I see little advance at all in theological reflection on these issues within the evangelical community, and scant evidence of awareness that the central doctrine in contest for the 21st century is anthropology.
One thing is for sure. Even the dramatic debates on cloning and stem cell research, which we could hardly have imagined would make “bioethics” so prominent as we sat in the Rockford Room back in the early 90s - and which some commentators have seen as the major domestic issue of the Bush administration’s two terms in office—have not had the effect of getting bioethics into the evangelical mainstream. Our best thinkers seem little interested in the field, and precious few churches have placed this agenda near the heart of theirs.
There is no simple explanation for these very serious facts, and the issue is not one merely for evangelicals but for any serious Christian voice. I ended my essay on “Bioethics in Christianity” for the multi-volume Encyclopedia of Bioethics in the following sobering terms, which read perhaps as an epitaph though could equally be seen as a challenge. These were the concerns I had in mind when I laid the plans for CBHD. Sad to say, despite the best efforts of many of us, not a lot has changed.
These unfolding questions raise the most profound concerns, both for the Christian understanding of human procreation and of human nature itself. The significance of such basic theological themes as the nexus of marriage/sexuality/family and the nature of human being itself are at stake. There is no greater need than for fresh exploration of the significance of the incarnation of Jesus Christ for our human nature in light of the new, emerging powers of biotechnology and cybernetics. The challenge to Christian theology is both to articulate the distinctives of the Christian understanding of human nature for Christians themselves, and then to translate that understanding into public terms, drawing on common language. Christian thinkers have so far shown little appetite for either of these tasks.
