Public administration is not imprisoned in the role of Pontius Pilate. The discipline itself has chosen this role, and it could choose to choose again, this time differently. It could take on the role advocated by Jesus.
It is impossible to define all of the characteristics of this role in detail.
Jesus himself explained that the spirit of holiness, or the voice of con- science, does not speak in advance of confrontations with power. But several aspects of a Jesusian public administration can be sketched to provide a contrast with our current professional posture.
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Choosing Our Kingdom
Perhaps the most basic step required to forge a spiritually centered public administration is for us to establish a vision of the social order we hope to bring about. As it stands, the discipline embraces a vacuous “profes- sionalism” and relies on such abstractions as “honesty,” “justice,” “fairness,”
“efficiency,” and “regime values” for guidance in addressing questions of conscience in individual cases and situations. If this ever produces good- ness, it is only by chance, for any code of ethics must be adjusted to circumstances. Ethics are a means to an end, not an end to themselves.
Clearly, Pontius Pilate was honest, fair, efficient, and loyal to Roman values, but the system he supported was evil, and he knew it, or he would not have publicly washed his hands to allay his sense of guilt. Scholars and practitioners of public administration reveal this same awareness of their systemic immorality when they search for a professional code of ethics to shield them from moral responsibility for the role they play in a framework they compose but do not want to confront.
Jesus spoke of “kingdoms” to help us focus on our highest goal. He also offered a general description of the kingdom he believed would be best. It would value mercy more than justice; its leaders would be servants rather than rulers; and it would be guided by two simple commandments.
Modern public administration may favor some other ideal, but it will never know this if it continues to remain silent on the question. As it is, public administration is bringing about a kingdom, but the discipline and the profession are allowing this kingdom to be chosen for them, and the choice is being made not by flesh-and-blood human beings, but by a superstructure of power with a mind of its own.
Confronting Power
In addition to pointing us toward a morally good kingdom, Jesus gave advice about how to bring such a kingdom into being. Public adminis- tration aims to be practical, but it has not faced the question of practical for what? The discipline has naively equated goodness with utility. It has assumed that it is good simply to be useful to the established regime.
Once public administration sets its sights higher, on a better kingdom, it must consider not how to serve the present order, but how to transform it.
During his interrogation by the high priest the night before he was taken to Pilate, Jesus presented a model for wrestling with the authority of one’s colleagues. Basically, Jesus sought to make people take respon- sibility for their actions even though they were acting as agents in a larger system of power. At one point, Jesus was asked by the high priest to explain his doctrine, and Jesus refused, telling the priest that he had
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spoken “openly to the world” and that if the priest wanted to know his views he should “ask them which heard me” (John 18:20–21). Jesus knew that he had spoken obliquely, and that only those with “ears to hear”
could have understood his teachings about the kingdom of God, so he demanded that the priest take responsibility for showing that Jesus had been blasphemous, which would have required the priest to interpret Jesus’ teachings and thereby render a personal judgment as to their meaning and acceptability. But as soon as Jesus had spoken, he was slapped by one of the officers of the court, who said, “Answerest thou the high priest so?” (John 18:22). The officer was demanding that Jesus acknowledge the power and glory of the high priest by being less assertive in his answers. Significantly, at this point Jesus did not turn the other cheek. Instead, he argued back, telling the guard, “If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil: but if well, why smitest thou me?” (John 18:23).
Again, Jesus insisted that those who persecuted him should show why they believed he was guilty, not just mindlessly join the collective con- demnation, and he refused to bow to their status and authority.
The idea that Jesus advocated passive obedience to authority, because he said that people should turn the other cheek when they are struck, is a complete misinterpretation of his teachings. His remark about turning the other cheek was simply an example given in his Sermon on the Mount to stress the importance of becoming as perfect as possible so that law and power will not be needed to maintain order (Matt. 5:39; Luke 6:29).
The remark was a call for love, not for mindless obedience to the law or to abuse. Jesus’ real attitude toward authority was revealed in his reaction to the guard and to the high priest; he stood up to them and demanded that they be accountable for their actions.
Jesus did the same thing directly to Pontius Pilate when Pilate asked him whether he claimed to be the king of the Jews. Jesus responded,
“Sayest thou this thing of thyself, or did others tell thee of it?” (John 18:34).
Jesus was not seeking to understand the basis of Pilate’s accusation; he knew that he was being accused of attempting to organize the Jews in rebellion. Rather, he was trying to force Pilate to take, or at least to assign, responsibility for the charges. Once again, Jesus was pushing the issue of accountability. He wanted Pilate to be specific as to who was making the charges, because he knew well that the Sanhedrin and the Roman authorities, like all worldly power, operated in exactly the opposite fashion, that is, to detach actions from individuals and thereby create larger “forces”
that move along as if they were beyond any single individual’s control.
Today, the skill of forcing responsibility to be acknowledged is recog- nized in government, but it is not studied and taught. Anyone who has ever participated in an administrative staff meeting or a meeting of a political body knows that many of the undercurrents in such settings
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center precisely around issues of responsibility and morality. People talk like Jesus did at his trial; they are seldom frontal. They ask questions:
“What happened to this or that?” “What do you think?” “When was that due?” Further, they ask such questions not only or even primarily to gather information, but to link actions and consequences with individuals. The language used in the hallways of power to describe this maneuvering testifies to this. We speak of “sandbagging,” “smoking him out,” “deflecting the blame,” etc.
A Jesusian public administration would consciously decode this lan- guage in relation to the moral context of the administrator. Currently, the discipline ignores the very important phenomenon of administrative maneuvering, because public administration lacks moral perspective. Once the discipline and the profession embrace a political ideal and an aware- ness of the power of spirituality in history, they will be able to hear the language of administration clearly. They will learn and teach the art of the parable, the subtle question, the statement with hidden meanings.
Self-Sacrifice
This bring us to a third point. A Jesusian public administration would place value on what might be called “professional martyrdom,” and the profession would organize itself accordingly.
Jesus understood his crucifixion correctly to be potentially an explosive event in the evil system of power surrounding him. He wanted those responsible to be identified with their actions. By not physically fighting back or verbally mocking his accusers, he denied his captors the oppor- tunity of blaming him for their decision. Through his life and death, Jesus showed the world the human face of those who were then, and are still now, allowing themselves to be swept along by the dark forces of power and glory.
Today, most public-administration scholars and practitioners are well aware that the professional public administrator is frequently caught in deep conflicts between his or her conscience and the requirements of law, custom, or political expediency. Often, public administrators find themselves faced with professional crucifixion if they stand up to elected officials or to administrative superiors. For a while, artful administrators can choose their words carefully and maneuver with skill to put respon- sibility where it belongs, but eventually, if they truly follow the voice of the spirit within them, they will find themselves before the equivalent of the Sanhedrin.
The discipline of public administration should prepare its students to face these challenges, and the profession should organize itself to provide support. Jesus warned his followers that they would be brought before
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“governors and kings,” and he instructed them on how to behave. He also taught them to take time to strengthen their relationships with one another. They broke bread together. They washed one another’s feet. They sang and they danced.
In short, public administration should seek to become less a discipline and a profession, and more a social and political movement. The end of the world, or the “world to come,” appears to be approaching. A global system of command and status is rising above us like a great beast. The spirit of humanity, which is stirring across the globe, is calling for help.
Will we have “ears to hear”?
Notes
1. R. C. Chandler, “The Problem of Moral Illiteracy in Professional Discourse:
The Case of the Stated Principles of the ASPA,” American Review of Public Administration 16, no. 3 (1982): 369–86.
2. The discipline seems to be in agreement that professional ethics must be grounded in something more than (or other than) theology, such as in concern for human life, in commitment to honesty, or in certain “regime values.” See: B. Jennings, “Taking Ethics Seriously in Administrative Life:
Constitutionalism, Ethical Reasoning, and Moral Judgment,” in Ethical Frontiers in Public Management: Seeking New Strategies for Resolving Ethical Dilemmas, Ed. J. S. Bowman (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1991), 64–90.
3. I place Spengler in this list because he is clearly the author to whom Strauss is sometimes responding. See: O. Spengler, Form and Actuality, vol. 1 of The Decline of the West, trans. C. F. Atkinson (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1926).
4. M. Weber, The City, trans. Don Martindale and G. Neuwirth (New York:
Free Press, 1958), 81–89.
5. M. I. Finley, The Ancient Greeks (New York: Penguin Books, 1963).
6. A. Erskine, The Hellenistic Stoa: Political Thought and Action (Ithaca, N.Y.:
Cornell University Press, 1990).
7. J. Pelikan, The Excellent Empire: The Fall of Rome and the Triumph of the Church (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1987).
8. Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (New York:
Dell Publishing, 1963).
9. For a history of the Jesus movement and how it became Christianity, see:
T. Sheehan, The First Coming: How the Kingdom of God Became Christianity (New York: Random House, 1986).
10. L. Strauss, Liberalism Ancient and Modern (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989).
11. This was how Lincoln justified his opposition to slavery, even though the institution of slavery was constitutionally guaranteed. The opening lines of the Gettysburg Address refer us back to 1776, not 1789.
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12. Leo Strauss, The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism: An Introduction to the Thought of Leo Strauss, Ed. T. Pangle (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989).
13. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, trans. W. Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1966).
14. M. Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York:
Scribner, 1958).
15. Leo Strauss, “The Mutual Influence of Theology and Philosophy,” The Independent Journal of Philosophy 3, Vol. 3 (1979) pp. 111–118.
16. M. Jay, The Dialectical Imagination (Boston: Beacon Press, 1973).
17. J. Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (Boston: MIT Press, 1990).
18. J. C. Alexander, Fin de Siecle Social Theory (London: Verso, 1995).
19. For a very different reading of Strauss, see: S. B. Drury, The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988). My interpretation of Strauss’s view of Christianity is based not on what he says, but on his consistent silence with respect to Christianity, which was immediately relevant to his analysis of Western culture. He tells us that silence in such circumstances implies that the author holds unpopular views that cannot be safely expressed. See: L. Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988).
20. L. deHaven-Smith, The Hidden Teachings of Jesus: The Political Meaning of the Kingdom of God (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Phanes Press, 1994).
21. L. deHaven-Smith, “How Jesus Planned to Overthrow the Roman Empire,”
Religious Studies and Theology 16, no. 1 (1997): pp. 48–59.
22. In addition to such statements in the Gospels that have come down to the current era in the New Testament canon, writings have survived from several ancient Jewish and Persian sects that were founded specifically for the purpose of developing and transmitting the esoteric tradition. These sects came to be referred to as “gnostic,” which is the Greek word for
“knowing,” because they believed salvation depended not on faith but on knowledge. Throughout this essay, when I cite the Gnostic gospels, the source is: J. M. Robinson, The Nag Hammadi Library in English (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1990). Perhaps best known in this tradi- tion, the Dead Sea scrolls and the Nag Hammadi library, both of which were exhumed in Israel in the middle of the 20th century, pr esent an image of Jesus as having a message shrouded in secrecy. The writings from these sects, which include gospels by Thomas, Philip, and Mary Magdalene, cannot be counted as any more accurate than the texts in the New Testament canon. The influence of Greek philosophy on the Gnostic tradition is particularly evident, just as the influence of Jewish apocalyptic ideas is evident in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. But the mere existence of the Gnostic tradition points to the fact that there was more to what Jesus said than met the ear.
23. Jesus was frequently called the “son of David” and was said to be a descendent of David’s (Matt. 1:1, 6, 17, 9:27, 12:3, 12:23, 15:22, 20:30–31, 21:19, 22:42; Mark 2:25, 10:47–48; Luke 1:27, 32, 2:4, 11, 3:31, 18:38–39;
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John 7:42). Jesus also compared himself to David (Matt. 12:3; Luke 6:3).
Further, the story about Jesus having been born in Bethlehem, a story that must have been told by Jesus himself (if it was not fabricated later), is a direct link to David, for David, too, was born in Bethlehem (1 Sam. 20:6).
Later in this chapter, I explain that Jesus had real-world political aims and ambitions, and that the “kingdom of God” was intended as a real-world empire. In this context, the link between Jesus and David is significant.
24. For detailed comparisons between Jesus, David, and Moses, see: D. C.
Allison, Jr., The New Moses: A Matthean Typology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993).
25. This is exactly what they did with Stephen. See Acts 7.
26. Moses Maimonides, The Guide for the Perplexed, trans. M. Friedlander (New York: Dover, 1956).
27. In the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus is reported to have told his disciples, “Ye shall be brought before governors and kings.” (Matt.
10:18; Mark 13:11; Luke 12:11. In the latter, Jesus says they will bring you
“unto the synagogues, and unto magistrates, and powers.”) He explained that it was precisely in this circumstance that the spirit of holiness could be activated; all the disciples had to do was to focus totally on the moment and to speak directly from their hearts rather than from their minds. “Take no thought of how or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in the same hour what ye shall speak. For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of the Father which speaketh in you” (Matt. 10:19–20; see also Mark 13:11 and Luke 12:11–12). The Holy Spirit is the attitude we possess in the face of power when we do not think ahead about consequences or punishments.
28. John 2:18–19 quotes Jesus as saying, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” I am using the quote by Jesus’ accuser at his trial, as reported in Mark 14:58. There are at least two reasons for thinking that the latter is the more accurate quote. First, the quote in John suggests that Jesus challenged his listeners to tear down the temple themselves, but Jesus clearly saw himself as tearing down the temple or, more precisely, the temple law. Second, Stephen was tried for saying that Jesus would “destroy this place” and “change the customs which Moses delivered us” (Acts 6:14).
For political reasons, the Book of John may have played down the fact that Jesus wanted to eliminate the authority of institutionalized religion.
29. Several interpretations are obvious in the Bible. The people to whom Jesus made the remark took him literally; they thought he was saying that he could physically replace the temple in three days. They asked in astonish- ment, “Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days?” (John 2:20). In contrast, at the trial when the remark was reported by witnesses, the high priest did not understand it, and he asked Jesus to explain (Matt. 26:61; Mark 14:60). Later, the people who wrote the canon Gospels interpreted the statement as a veiled reference to Jesus’ bodily resurrection; in John’s words, Jesus “spake of the temple of his body” (John 2:21). However, Stephen, the first martyr after Jesus, preached something else entirely; Stephen taught that when Jesus said,
“[H]e shall destroy this place,” Jesus meant that he would “change the
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customs which Moses delivered us” (Acts 6:14). In short, some of Jesus’
listeners thought he was speaking of the temple literally as a building, while others concluded that he was speaking figuratively about his own body, and still others decided that he intended the temple as a symbol for the Judaic laws.
30. A. Toynbee, A Study of History, vols. VII–X, abridged by D. C. Somervel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985).
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