Dear Brian,
Thank you for your contribution to not only the emergent conversation, but to the global body of Christ as well. Your unshakable quest for truth, proactive love and compassion for the world, and courage to authentically live these out regardless of how others respond is both challenging and inspiring.
Responding to your newest book A New Kind of Christianity I will begin with the narrative question. You reveal the shaping influence of Greek philosophical categories and Roman social and political thought in relation to the development of Christian theology since it’s inception. You then show how this Greco-Roman paradigm was formative (and as a result destructive) for the establishment by the church of the six stage narrative of eden, fall, condemnation, salvation heaven, or hell. The exposing of the cultural forces that contributed to the formation of this narrative–whether people are ready to accept your proposal for a different shaping narrative or not–carries the potential to initiate and provide a beginning point for an important conversation about how culture influences our theology, and about how central narrative is for the life of the church. The exposing of how this specific six line rendering of the biblical narrative is held captive to a Greco-Roman framework will help me help others to be able to see how our church and our theology today is still held captive to not only this Greco-Roman paradigm, but to other cultural forces as well. Specifically the ones you mentioned in your introduction: colonialism, the Enlightenment, consumerist individualism, rationalism, and triumphant nationalism. I believe people need to be liberated from captivity to these forces, and I believe this narrative question could provide the key to unlock these chains while I move forward with this project.
I am now going to skip ahead to the Jesus question. You wrote, “We are all tempted to remake Jesus into just about anything we like…[and] too many of us, whether as individuals or groups, honestly–and naively–believe our view is “objective” and “true,” with no distortion at all” (121). You then name some of the Jesus’ people have believed in: the white supremacist Jesus, the Eurocentric Jesus, the slave-owning Jesus, the prosperity-gospel get-rich-quick Jesus, to name a few (122). The exposing of how many times we have created a Jesus in our own image, and the naming of different versions of this distorted and co-opted Jesus creates an opening for a broader conversation on the continuous need to re-think our views of Jesus. Using these examples as a reference point enables me to show others the need for re-thinking and rediscovering the Jesus of 1st Century Palestine that preached the good news under the shadow of the Roman Empire that was already preaching a form of good news, and who was proclaiming and embodying the Kingdom of God in an area that was dominated by the Kingdom of Caesar. Showing how as we have matured as the church we have had to let go of older, outdated and less Christ-like versions of Jesus will help reveal the need for this re-thinking as I help guide people through this process.
Brian, again, thank you so much for your faithfulness, selflessness, and courage to embark on and to continue this quest. It seems fitting to end with a couple “questians” I am left with. (1) How important is the dismantling of Western hegemony in theological discourse to this quest? (2) Do you believe that in the future the church will view our current relationship to the GLBT community like we view the church’s past relationship with slavery?
Sincerely,
Kevin
Kevin – thanks for your note, and the clear and accurate summary of my thinking. I especially appreciate your sensitivity to people being “held captive” by certain mindsets or thought/value patterns (we might even call them “spirits” – as in “the spirit of the age”). This idea of liberation from enslavement certainly resonates with what I perceive to be the primal narratives of the Bible.
About Western hegemony … I can’t tell you how important I think this question is. Is Christianity a Western religion? Is it the patron religion of Western civilization – the way Constantine intended it to be the official religion of the Roman Empire? Is its goal to support the global domination of the world by Western Civilization and its Western Christian Religion?
Or is that whole approach antithetical to the life, teaching, and mission of Jesus – who came not to dominate (be served) but to serve? You can guess my answer, and you can imagine why I think this is so important – with implications regarding terrorism, nuclear war, the environment, and so much more.
On the LGBT question, it’s always dangerous to compare one group’s suffering with another group’s suffering. For example, if you try to compare the situation of people under apartheid in South Africa with the situation of Palestinians under occupation in the Middle East, people will immediately point out differences – and there are many differences. So then you’re arguing about your comparison, not engaging with the situation. The same thing happens when you compare the issue of slavery and the issue of sexual identity. Yes, there are similarities – for example, the way the Bible was used to defend slavery has remarkable similarities to the way the Bible has been used to attack homosexuality. But there are important differences too – people became slaves only by the injustice of kidnappers and slavetraders, while people become gay by some as-yet unknown combination of genes, intrauterine development, etc. Apart from situations of abuse, there’s no malice involved. You see what I’m saying …
But I do think that over the coming decades, the current trend will continue … the trend towards dropping our prejudices against LGBT people. Just as the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8 was liberated by the gospel from being shamed and excluded based on race and sexual identity, the process of liberation and reconciliation continues through history.
Kevin, as usual, I enjoy your thoughts and your writing is remarkably clear.
I find that many hold a mistaken assumption that we can simply extract Jesus out of his cultural context and use that as an objective benchmark for how we should live. It is HARD to get people to even consider that the Jesus they’re following might be more informed by their western, capitalist/consumerist, hyper-individualized culture than by what he really said, meant, and did. Additionally, people seem to have a hard time with any ideas that are couched in tension rather than hard and fast rules. I look forward to more conversations and dialog with you about these kinds of things, as I run into them all the time.