The Foreign Service Journal, April 2015

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | APRIL 2015 85 Looking for Patterns Theology and the Disciplines of the Foreign Service: The World’s Potential to Contribute to the Church Theodore L. Lewis, Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2015, $22, paperback, 169 pages. Reviewed By Ruth M. Hall In Theology and the Disciplines of the Foreign Service , retired FSO Theodore L. Lewis explores the ways in which his diplomatic career and priestly calling enhanced, informed and enriched each other. Part memoir and part theologi- cal discussion, the book draws on the author’s 30 years at the State Depart- ment and other overseas experiences. Lewis analyzes how our cognitive patterns—formed by experience in trades, crafts and other disciplines, including the Foreign Service—can illuminate our understanding of the Bible, and clarify its meanings for us as individuals living in modern com- munities. Early in his career, Lewis “recognized the affinity between the approach of biblical criticism and the critical approach I had developed in the Foreign Service.” While serving in the U.S. Army during World War II, Lewis worked as a linguist during the occupation of Japan. He then used the GI Bill to earn a master’s degree from Harvard, where Lewis, the son of a Quaker mother and an Episcopalian father, turned toward the Episcopal Church. After Lewis joined the State Depart- ment in 1952, his first Foreign Service assignment was in Saigon, where he researched and wrote economic reports on local industries. “Allowing the pat- terns to emerge,” as he puts it, from the data he collected via his field work helped make up for the absence of reli- BOOKS able statistics. After a subse- quent tour in Pakistan, Lewis resigned to attend Virginia Theological Seminary, earning a doctorate in divinity. At seminary his analytical and language skills, as well as exposure to non-Western cultures, helped Lewis master biblical scholarship and criti- cism. Viewing Roman society in terms of his overseas reporting, for instance, was fruitful. Lewis also observed the same organiza- tional duality in the English Reforma- tion as in the Foreign Service: “a calling forth of talents but at the same time, stifling them.” In the early 1960s, Lewis rejoined the Foreign Service, returning to Vietnam under challenging circumstances. His theological studies helped him cope with 60-hour workweeks and intense economic reporting demands in the joint embassy-USAID office. Among other things, he visited slaughterhouses in the pre-dawn hours to report on pork supplies, the second-most impor- tant food staple after rice and a proxy indicator for Viet Cong control over the provinces. A later tour in the Congo brought Lewis into contact with the legacy of Apolo Kivebulaya (1864-1933), a priest and evangelist whose work in Boga (eastern Congo) established the Angli- can Church there. Lewis recalls Foreign Service col- leagues who committed suicide after the shame of being selected out and deplores the arbitrariness of unfair employee evaluations kept hidden from employees. “Under the regulations existing at the time,” he recalls, “I was not allowed to read [my own evalua- tion], but only to have it read to me.” In the mid-1970s, after a meaningful discussion with an International Mon- etary Fund official, Lewis decided to write a dissent cable, urging the administration to re-establish diplomatic relations with Vietnam early on—but “with little effect. It seemed the resentments from hav- ing lost the Vietnam War were still too strong.” Lewis also describes the terrific strain that multiple hardship tours placed on him and his family, including traumas and serious illnesses, as well as how his faith helped him to cope. His connection with various expatri- ate churches is also vividly described (including photos). After leaving the Foreign Service in the mid-1980s, Lewis worked on his theological writings at Cambridge and Oxford, partly guided by Alistair McGrath. In 1996 he self-published To Restore the Church: Radical Redemp- tion History to Now , which took 25 years to research and complete. Prominent theologian Stanley Hauerwas of Duke Divinity School also influenced him, and wrote the preface to this volume. That said, any member of the Foreign Service community will find much to ponder in these pages—even readers who have no interest in theology. Ruth M. Hall is a member of the Foreign Service Journal Editorial Board. Since join- ing the Foreign Service as an economic of- ficer in 1992, she has served in New Delhi, Kathmandu, Frankfurt, Jakarta, Baghdad and Washington, D.C., where she currently works in the Office of Civil Rights.