Community ministry

Morris, Stevens, and Urquhart: Eds.  “The Word on the Street: An Invitation to Community Ministry.”

Winfield, BC: Wood Lake Books, 1991

Reviewed by Adrian Peetoom

This book contains the stories of 18 Canadians who from east to west (Vancouver to Halifax) try to be the face of Christ to other Canadians who live in the margins: the poor, the alcoholics, the homeless, the mentally ill. In various local institutions they may provide food and shelter, but beyond that they offer a human touch to those who are often isolated, ignored, avoided, dismissed. One of the authors is Larry Derkach who at that time worked in Edmonton’s Bissell Centre. He observes: “Maybe one of the most remarkable things about the ministry that we’re involved in is that it’s unremarkable. Somebody comes in for food, and you give them food! You have become part of the body of Christ ministering to another part of the body of Christ. Theologically, there’s nothing to it. It’s unremarkable. But that’s where the essence is!” (p. 8).

That kind of work isn’t for everyone, and not every Christian is called to labour at it directly. And even though HTAC supports Edmonton’s Inner City ministry with a periodic Sunday lunch (food and servers), HTACs major community outreach is towards artists in our neighbourhood, to musicians and actors. That is also a legitimate calling for a contemporary church.

But even if we’re not directly involved with this kind of ministry, it behooves us to be well aware that others are. Moreover, we can support them in two ways.

1.       By supporting others with our money.

2.       By supporting those who challenge governments of all levels to become more just.

Reading this book will help us become more involved as in it we meet not only the stories of those who are the helping hands, but also of the hands that are helped. 

A new church?

Mead, Loren B. “The Once and Future Church: Reinventing the Congregation for a New Mission Frontier.”

New York: The Alban Institute, 1991.

Reviewed by Adrian Peetoom

Once in a while one comes across a book that truly hits the spot, a morsel of caviar amidst plain horse d’oeuvres, a sip of extraordinary vintage while filling up with plonk. This was such a book for me. It articulated what I had not met articulated before, so clear, in plain language and in under one hundred pages.  What a book for a Saturday morning Parish Conversation!

So?

The author’s focus is on “mission.” Not only because “church” cannot be thought of without thinking about “mission” (see the Gospel of St. Matthew 28:16-20), but also because whatever it understands its mission to be at a certain time determines how it will become organized. As for church today, it seems in transition but doesn’t quite know yet what the end result will be. This book describes the transition/confusion. The old understanding of mission is disappearing, local congregations don’t quite know what their mission is/will be, and familiar roles of laity and clergy seem inadequate (pp 4-5).

He describes three previous paradigms.

1.       The apostolic one (the first three centuries of church). In those centuries believers developed local communities out of house congregations in the midst of a hostile, antagonistic and (at times) persecuting socio-political environment. The Boundary between congregation and the world was precise. Inside “a community formed of common values and shaped by a story within a larger, hostile environment: that was part of the story of the Apostolic Paradigm (11).”

2.       The Christendom Paradigm. This begins to develop with the “conversion” of Emperor Constantine and took shape in the aftermath of the collapse of that empire.  With the Christian faith now the ruling religion, and bishops and princes replacing the remnants of the Roman Empire governing structure, mission changed from being a tight-knit community inviting others in, to a “far off enterprise.” Wasn’t  everybody in the neighbourhood a Christian already? Congregation became “parish,” a geographic term.  Unity became essential, as did a pyramidal structure of church governance, which diminished the role of the laity. The calling of laity was to obey, and be a “good, law-abiding, tax-paying, patriotic citizen (22).[i]

3.       But this second paradigm began to die some 150 years ago. The “unbelievers” were no longer far away – they walked by the church buildings in ever greater numbers. The world resided right outside the church once again. We’re aiming for a third paradigm, but (according to the author), it’s too early to describe it with any confidence. What he does know is this: mission in that paradigm is being mission in the place where a congregation finds itself.

The author sees three polarities at work (polarities being “differences you live with but never resolve – 44).”

i.                     Are we “parish” or “congregation?”

ii.                   Is mission about “servanthood” or “conversion?”

iii.                  Are we to be exclusive or inclusive?

In the rest of this book he spells out the consequences of living within these polarities. Required will be changes in thinking about the role of laity, clergy and institutional arrangements, as well as in theology. Tensions will be great, for a great many current church members reside within the structures and thinking of the Second Paradigm. Arguments about the Lord’s Prayer in public schools and the Ten Commandments carved on monuments are clear examples.

Here is how he ends his book. “In the final analysis, the issue is one of mission. How do we as Christians – whether mainline or sideline, liberal or conservative, connectional or free – find a community that forms and sustains us in an authentic faith and move out bearing that faith into the structures of our ambiguous society? How do we pass those forms of community on to the next generation?  (92).

By the way, the author is an Episcopalian (Anglican)!

---

[i] As a Protestant my first reaction was: what about the Reformation? Did it not change this paradigm? The author argues that it didn’t. Presbyterian and Episcopalian governing structures do not differ in essentials. Roman Catholics and Protestants went about foreign missions in much the same way, and organized their congregations/parishes in much the same way.  

Southcott on Parish Life

Southcott, E.W. “The Parish Comes Alive.”

London: A.R. Mowbray & Co. Limited, 1956.

Reviewed by Adrian Peetoom

Judging by the blank library card in the back of this book, and its old book smell, no current member of HTAC has ever opened it. Well, I highly recommend that some of us do. It was written by a Canadian-born British clergyman who, much earlier than many of his British peers, addresses the collapse of Anglican membership and Anglican consciousness after World War II. In this he anticipated by about three decades similar concerns being raised in Canada. 

I read this book not so much for particular liturgical and parish-organizations suggestions Southcott makes,  as his writing is set in British parish conditions. It’s his rationales that make this manageable book interesting, his discussions about the nature of church and parish life. In “Let the Liturgy be Splendid” he lays out the power of Eucharist, observing on p. 36 for instance, that “I believe that we are meant to be trained in the liturgy in order that we may take corporation action outside the communion service.”  Such an observation echoes what a friend of mine once observed, namely that we go to church so as to be fed for weekly journeys.

What sets Southcott apart from many of his peers is his insistence that each parish should develop a regular program of weekday communion in parish homes (parish meaning the geography within which a particular church operates). Recognizing that many people can’t come to church on Sunday, church should accommodate others with a liturgy in their own place, however sparse that liturgy may be. He sees how church has become a compartmentalized human activity, something for Sunday while during the rest of the week we think and act with categories not likely to be those of Scripture. Here is how he puts it on pp. 73-4:

                Where [Eucharist] celebrations take place – in the church or in the home – is largely irrelevant: it              is the community that celebrates them that is important. But to such an extent we have lost our          roots in the soil that the only way to recover the integral connection of the Eucharistic offering   with daily work ,may be to take the whole thing back into the midst of the sweat and muck it is meant to be offering and transforming.

It was an idea not without its critics, as some newspaper clippings testify.

He also advocates regular and frequent parish meetings that concentrate on the church’s teaching and training.

And here is how he sums up his concerns, citing a report. “The Church is a community with a common life whose source is God…They share it because they are made members in Baptism, and their membership means that they have one heart and soul. In the early church the evidence was marked and led to early demonstrations that they had all things in common.” (142) And on p. 143: “The Parish Communion and the parish meeting are means by which the Church might be helped to fulfill its mission of teaching people how to live and work together. “

This book may be a quick and simple read, but it has a profound message, also for us at HTAC.         

Cahill's account of the Irish

Cahill, Thomas. “How The Irish Saved Civilization: The untold story of Ireland’s heroic role from the fall of Rome to the rise of medieval Europe.”

New York: Doubleday, 1995. Review by Adrian Peetoom

Occasionally one come a across a book that illuminates a topic ne has never thought about, and does it in language so inviting and engaging that one sighs at the end: “How could I not have known about this until now?” This is one such book.

Cahill takes us back to the last few centuries of Imperial Rome, and its demise.  Yes, the northern European Barbarians crossed various rivers (Rhine, Danube) to overwhelm the erstwhile seemingly invincible Roman legions, but they managed it only because the Imperium had been fatally weakened by a number of factors (Cahill describes for us).  The tax collection system was one, and he pouts into a wider context those folks we meet in the Gospels. They were poor sods, actually, not just the brutal exploiters we’ve had implanted in our minds by sermons and church teachings. No wonder that Jesus embraced at least one (Levi or Matthew) – see pp 24 ff.

The Barbarians did their barbaric things, which included destroying books and libraries, as well as works of art. In doing so they destroyed not only the representations of Greek philosophy, but also the body of theological works already built up in the Christian Church’s still short history.  They scorched Europe barren of learning.

Except in Ireland. This isolated island was largely spared this kind of destruction.  Enter Patrick, a slave boy born in England but transported to Ireland, whence he escaped to become a wanderer, until he felt called by God to serve him as pries, and returned to Ireland. He never did become all that well educated himself, but as he set out to convert Ireland, his followers assembled in monastic communities, and began to copy whatever books they could lay their hands on: bibles (in Latin), commentaries, works of philosophy written in Greek and Latin, whatever. And once established and with ample available manpower, they entered first England, and then continental Europe, for form similar communities with similar mandates. Without them so much literature we know take for granted would have been lost forever.  And my own Dutch forebears might never have become Christians but for Irish missionaries like Boniface (who, I was taught in my Christian elementary school, was murdered in a small old community called Dokkum in Frisia – a myth I have been told much later).

A fine, fine read!

           

Mouw, civility

Mouw, Richard J. “Uncommon Decency:  Christian civility in an uncivil world.”

Downers Grove, ILL: InterVarsity Press, 1992

Especially in the light of recent political (and in the US Tea Party and Christian Fundamentalist war-like behavior), I would wish this book in the hands of every HTAC member. (Alas, it is out of print.)

Richard Mouw is President of Fuller Theological Seminary in California, and author of many books, some academic. In this slim volume and in plain language he tackles the life of a Christian in a culture not all that civil anymore. He lauds the importance of civil attitudes, not just a set of behavours, but behaviours welling up out of a deep commitments. That the love of God never ceases. That we ought to follow Jesus in meeting all human beings with respect, patience and a willingness to listen. That we human beings don’t need to win.

He tackles pluralism, amongst others, the challenge of other religions on our street, but also has wise things to say about the limits of civility, when our patience and non-judgmental stance threats would have us slide into wishy-washiness and even indifference.

Citing another writer, he observes that perhaps the revelation that human beings are created in the image of God should not be interpreted in such an individual sense as we often do. Maybe the whole of humanity is reflective of God. Given that, he observes that,

“God cares deeply about cultural diversity. This means that Christians need not be threatened by cultural differences as such. These differences are to be sanctified, not eradicated…To cultivate that spirit of affirmation is crucial to our growth in civility.” (79).

Sprinkled throughout the book are many stories, Mouw’s encounters with a wide variety of other people, Christians and non-Christians, even atheist. He demonstrates both how we might deal with similar encounters, but also owns up to not always having done it right himself. It makes the book a talk from a sympathetic friend.

Once again, highly recommended.           

Christian culture?

 Moore, T.M. “Culture Matters: A Call for Consensus on Christian Cultural Engagement.”

Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2007.

Review by Adrian Peetoom

Christians live within the culture of their days, and they always have, and so do all human beings, past, present and future.  Jesus did. “Culture consists of the artifacts, institutions, and conventions by which people define, sustain, and enrich their lives. Human beings are creatures of culture; we require it for our very existence and could not avoid it or escape it even if we tried. (20).” Culture is us together. But as the author also observes, “not all culture is edifying (my underlining), and this is especially so when our objective in life is the realization of the kingdom of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit (Matt 6:33; Rom. 14:7).” So how should Christians grapple with a culture that may be both good and bad?

The author gives us extensive discussions of five historical periods which faced this thorny subject, suggesting that we can (and must) learn from all five. Fortunately he used plain prose.

1.       Culture Critic St. Augustine (5^th century)

2.       The Celtic culture builders  (5^th-8^th centuries)

3.       Calvin, the culture educator of Geneva (16^th century)

4.       Politician and journalist Abraham Kuyper (The Netherlands, 19^th century)

5.       Communicator 20^th century Lithuanian-Polish-American poet Czeslaw Milosz.

All along Moore is critical of current Christian believers and their relationship with contemporary culture, though he is not without hope and points to positive development. The question of the book is: can a more unified and common Christian attitude towards culture be developed?  Can we teach Christians to be critical of their culture, and also erect signposts that point to the Kingdom of God? This is communal work (158), and ecumenical work (159-160).

                “Culture matters span the spectrum of human interest and activity, and a kingdom distinguished by righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit will certainly offer an interpretation and approach to culture that must stand pout amid and speak prophetically to the chaos and cacophony of contemporary life (161).”

Culture is not neutral, though many Christians still think so.  It is time to learn from the five predecessors that culture is not neutral – and as Moore observes, he could have named many more predecessors. May we begin learning from all of them. This book is a fine primer to raise consciousness at HTAC.   

Hauerwas, 'The Peaceable kingdom"

Hauerwas, Stanley. “The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics.” Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983.

Books on ethics tend to be a search for universal principles (or rules), valid for all (or most) times and places. These universals can be grouped teleologically (the “good” of an action depends on its ends or purposes), or deontologically (actions are good in themselves regardless of consequences).  In as much as they go beyond descriptions (“that’s how it is”) and into prescriptions “(that’s what you should do”), these books tend to contain a number of cases studies and imaginary situations. For instance, “If telling the truth endangers lives, is lying the ethical thing to do?” Inevitably these books mention “freedom” and “autonomy.” After all, if we’re not free and in charge of our decisions, how can we be ethical? 

Some of these books specifically address the relationship between ethics and the Christian faith. Calling to mind that God is Creator, the traces of God’s design for the universe must reside everywhere. Also in ethics even when practiced by those who do not see God as Creator. Authors may point to the Ten Commandments as the foundation for all ethics. Other Christian writers seem to have more trouble making direct links between Bible pronouncements and doing right in modern conditions. They may lean towards seeing ethics as an entirely human endeavor (good humanists have the same notions of right and wrong as Christians do), but see the Christian faith as a motivator (don’t only talk about doing good, but do it because the Bible tells us so).

But here comes Stanley Hauerwas with his “Primer in Christian Ethics.” Now over 70 and retired, he taught theology for years, first at Notre Dame, and then at Duke University. He has produced a library of articles, interviews and books.  In 2001 Time Magazine called him the foremost theologian of our time. He is also known as a burr under the saddle, an iconoclast, a disturber of the status quo. He may be all of that, but any review of his work must be grounded in the realization that this man loves his Lord, loves the Church, and loves the People of God. He only wants them to be what God wants them to be, a conduit for God’s hope and joy and peace in a world that of itself (so Hauerwas believes) does not exhibit these qualities.

This is a “primer in” and not “of.” The difference is telling.  A “primer of” would have us expect a more or less definitive account. Keeping the first two paragraphs in mind, we might expect a modern Christian foundational account on which, with confidence, we build our personal set of ethical stances. A “primer in” seems to make a far more modest claim. My image was that of a curious person rooting around in the ethical garden. And that (for me) was his book.   

For starters, in the Foreword David Burrell (a trusted friend of the author) reflects this rooting around when after asking “Who will help me decide what to do?” he anticipates what Hauerwas will say by observing that “decisions are not so much the sorts of things we do (or make) as they are more nearly made for us, yet in the end make us by shaping our lives (ix). So much for “freedom” and “autonomy.” So tell us, Stanley, how can we be ethical if we are NOT free or autonomous, if we’re not in a position to make the decisions, but instead these are made for us? (But notice Burrell saying “more nearly…”)

Well, Hauerwas says in more than one place: ethics begins not with case studies and human situations that ask of us decisions about what we ought to think and do ethically. It begins with reflections on who we are, or who we ought to be.  And that for a Christian is a loaded question, one Hauerwas takes time to “root around in.”

“The nature of Christian ethics is determined by the fact that Christian convictions take the form of a story, or perhaps better, a set of stories that constitutes a tradition, which in turn creates and forms a community (24).” He doesn’t mean that in the Bible we find many stories (e.g. parables) which contain an important ethical truth or religious doctrine. No, the stories (forming one umbrella story) themselves are the truth. As Christians we live the story (as also enacted in liturgy), and our lives are to be part of the story. “My contention is that the narrative mode [of Christian convictions] is neither incidental nor accidental to Christian belief. There is no more fundamental way to talk of God than in a story. The fact that we come to know God through the recounting of the story of Israel and the life of Jesus is decisive for our truthful understanding of the kind of God we worship as well as the world in which we exist (25).” Not doctrine, but story is decisive for the way we live. “…it is God’s choice to be a Lord whose kingdom is furthered by our concrete obedience through which we acquire a history (story] befitting our nature as God’s creatures (27).”

Who are we, we who call ourselves Christian? The Hauerwas “rooting” offers us images startlingly different from those captured in media and most contemporary thinkers. First of all, we are creatures – “we come to know ourselves only in God’s life (28).” Second, we are historical beings, that is, we are part of a community shaped by a tradition. “Community joins us with others to further the growth of a tradition whose manifold storylines are meant to help individuals identify and navigate the path to the good. The self is subordinate to the community rather than vice versa, for we discover [our Christian self] [only] through a community’s narrated tradition. Third, “God has revealed himself narratively in the history of Israel and in the life of Jesus (28-9).” As we travel through our own lives, we travel the story as well.

That conviction makes Hauerwas observe that there is no universal ethics, no umbrella set of universals valid for all times and all places and all peoples. “…our moralities are historical; they require a qualifier (29).” There is no “ethics,” only Christian ethics, Buddhist ethics, Hindu ethics, humanist ethics, etc. And “Christian ethics…is not first of all concerned with ‘Thou shalt’ or ‘Thou shalt not.’ Its first task is to help us rightly envision the world (29).” “In other words, the enterprise of Christian ethics primarily helps us to see.” “We do not come to see by merely looking, but must develop disciplined skills through initiation into that community that attempts to live faithfully to the story of God. Furthermore we cannot see the world rightly unless we are changed, for as sinners we do not desire to see truthfully. Therefore Christian ethics must assert that by learning to be faithful disciples, we are more able to see the world as it is, namely God’s creation (29-30).”

Those are startling invitations. For we of the 21^st century have come to see community as merely the free choice of individuals. And faith as a compartment of our lives next to other compartments (work, family, recreation, leisure, hobbies, friends).  For many Christians the decision to attend church is weighed against the demands of the other compartments. In regular surveys about spirituality and religious practices, if one attends church once a month one is considered a regular attender.  But for Hauerwas a Christian’s identity depends on being intimate part of God’s community, for only within that community is our true nature nurtured and are our eyes opened to the truth. Or, as he says in one of his other books, there is no salvation outside the Church. “Just to the extent I refuse to be faithful to God’s way, to live as part of God’s life, my life assumes the character of rebellion. Our sin is not merely an error in overestimating our capacities. Rather it is the active and willful attempt to overreach our powers. It is the attempt to live sui generis, to live as if we are the authors of our own stories. Our sin is, thus, a challenge to God’s authorship and a denial that we are characters in the drama of the kingdom (31).”

It is within that community that we learn the true nature of virtues (decisions that are in harmony with our being), the constant practice of which forms our character (the instinct of acting rightly in various situations). We then live lives of true freedom, “a quality that derives from having a well-formed character. Put in traditional terms, only the truly good person can be a truly free person. In this view, freedom follows from courage and the ability to respond to a truthful story (37).” “We rightly seek neither happiness nor pleasure in themselves; such entities are elusive. Rather we learn happiness and pleasure when we find in a faithful narrative an ongoing and worthy task that is able to sustain our lives (68).”

Hauerwas spends time describing for us how the life of Israel and the life of Jesus give us that “faithful narrative ((76ff.).  Israel learned to see its existence determined by “a series of events…decisive for God’s relation to mankind (77).” And “early Christians came to understand and believe in Jesus’ life, death and resurrection…[as a] recapitulation of the life of Israel and thus presented the very life of God in the world. By learning to imitate Jesus, to follow in his way, the early Christians believed they were learning to imitate God, who would have them be heirs of the kingdom (78).” “We are not to accept the world with its hate and resentments as a given, but to recognize that we live in a new age which makes possible a new way of life (85).”

Here is the contrast between how most people approach morality these days, and the way of Hauerwas. On the one hand autonomous people who individually survey life and believe that in full freedom they choose how to act rightly. (But advertisers, politicians and media moguls know better: by and large they see only hordes to be manipulated, and fairly easily so.) Hauerwas offers the alternative of seeing ourselves as participants in a long story of God’s relationship with his world and humanity, a story that began before time and lasts until the end of time, a story that connects us intimately to others, but in learning and in service.  As we absorb and practice that story, we will be able to not only distinguish between right and wrong, but live it, almost instinctively. At least ideally so.

This book is a tough read, not because the language isn’t clear and the arguments not cogent. Its toughness arises from the challenge to the Church, which only recently has come to face its seemingly irrelevance in a world grown secular and forms of spirituality far removed from the Christian tradition. Are any of us Christians able to look in a mirror and see the person Hauerwas describes in this book?

And does Hauerwas get “practical?” Uhhh, sort of. He does advance “peace” as a major ethical commitment for Christians, peace also in the Mennonite sense of resisting all temptation to get violent, no matter what the provocations maybe. However, true to his major point, he declares us to be agents of God, who, when drenched in our identity as participants in God’s narrative, will know what to do in specific circumstances. At times I felt let down by that. Like most of us, I tend to live easier when I know the rules in advance. It’s tougher to be always wary about living the Christian life on guard, assessing situations as they come upon us for our specific calling then to do the right thing. Then again, the apostle Paul keeps contrasting living in the flesh and living in the Spirit, in trust that when one truly lives in the Spirit one will know what to do in specific circumstances. Paul, too, places the right person ahead of the right act (law). I hear in Hauerwas the echo of Paul.      

     

"Prophetic Imagination"

Advent Imagination

By Adrian Peetoom

Walter Brueggemann. “The Prophetic Imaginiation.” (Second edition:  Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001.)

As I listened to the various readings from the prophets this Advent (2011), a longtime niggle grabbed hold of me. “Are Old Testament prophets of any use to us today?” Of course some passages are familiar, those passages that, for as long as the Church has existed, have been understood to point to the coming of the Messiah who will bring joy and peace. But why should we bother with other parts of these old texts? Especially from that downer book Jeremiah, and even less from his Lamentations. Mostly waves of doom and despair, with only some passages of deliverance and joy!  Even Jonah is an unhappy prophet at the end.

But those cannot be the only musings about these 17 books of the Bible, just about 25% of the 66 book total. Our Anglican tradition includes them as a source of authority for our life of faith and morals. These mostly downer books have to have some place in our faith make-up. They must serve some function in our walk through life. That’s what our tradition teaches. Perhaps we’d better reflect a bit more.

For help I turned to “The Prophetic Imagination,” written by famous Old Testament scholar and preacher Walter Brueggemann.  He worried about the same thing I have worried about off and on, namely the relevance to our lives of these old prophets.  He recalls how in decades past scholars and preachers would study the contexts in which each individual prophet spoke, the historical circumstances out of which their words arose.  I remember long childhood sermons which for the first half consisted of history lectures aimed at making us understand why what they had said then was important for us now, specifically. The preachers didn’t always succeed!

But without repudiating that kind of exegesis altogether, Brueggemann takes a somewhat different tack in this book.  Without denying the specifics of each individual prophet (character, location, time period), he sees a link that ties them all together. The link consists of these elements:

1.       These prophets were all part of a community, however small. We should not think of prophets as solitary figures flinging their words into hostile crowds. At Elijah’s lowest moment Yahweh tells him that there are “seven thousand in Israel [whose knees] have not bent before Baal” (1 Kings 19:18). A remnant perhaps, but there will always be one, also in the 21^st century in the West. That’s an important point for us, as we experience the seeming public irrelevance of the Christian faith and message. 

2.       The believers (those [tribal?] communities then, the church today) are faced with “royalty” (others call it “empire”), which is the whole of how public life is organized. Samuel was told that the people of Israel wanted a king like all the surrounding nations had. This prophet told them that they would come to regret that desire (I Samuel 8). David’s son Solomon fulfilled Samuel’s predictions. For what did this king achieve? The trappings of contemporary kingship. A harem. Not tribes but districts. Bureaucracy.  A standing army. Conscripted labour. Reality captured in aphorisms (wisdom in the form of pithy sayings).  And as the books of Kings and Chronicles tell us, against that royal consciousness truth and freedom ran stuck, with both Israel and Judah annihilated some centuries hence. 

It doesn’t take much imagination to see ourselves as living within our own contemporary royal consciousness.  Brueggemann makes no bones about it. And he asks: how can such a system be challenged? His answer: only with “prophetic imagination,” for which we have the models in those old books. Not with countervailing trappings of the same kind, or refinements. Those weird prophetic words aren’t meant to provide alternate programs.  They are first the words of grief (all the downer passages which expose “empires”), and then of hope ( mostly poetry that steps outside any available box that caused such grief).  “Prophets” (and who of us isn’t called to be one?) behold their situation. First they weep. Then they recall God’s promises. And finally they proclaim the “Day of the Lord.” Not a program. Poetry.  

In one of his other books Brueggemann draws attention to an example found in 2 Kings chapters 18 and 19. Jerusalem is under siege by the Assyrians. One day one of the besiegers (a cupbearer who knows Hebrew) shouts in that language a message that essentially says: just as the gods of other nations did not save them, your Yahweh will not save you. So quit resisting.  King Hezekiah has instructed his people not to respond (for the respond is to acknowledge that the speaker has a case.) Instead, the king consults prophet Isaiah. And then, after receiving an Assyrian letter containing a similar invitation to surrender, he “went up to the Temple of Yahweh and spread [the letter] out before Yahweh.” He prayed, and Yahweh heard his prayer, in a long poetic response (2 Kings 19:21-28). In the chapter that deals with this part of 2 Kings Brueggemann suggests that Christians are bilingual. They know the language of the empire (they must, for they live in it), but they also know the language of their faith (“Hebrew”) for it is the language by which they live.     

I write this in the first week of December, 2011. Our House of Commons has been focused on the plight of Attawapiskat and other Aboriginal villages in Northern Ontario (and northern Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta). Clusters of First Nation people living in condemnable housing, and lacking provision for adequate education, health care and employment, in spite of tax-paid millions over a long period.  It’s not the first time we hear about these conditions. As Aboriginal leaders keep pointing out, after each flurry of concern and governmental promises the headlines and sound bites soon disappear.  Yes, the rest of Canada keeps sending “Indian Act” money, but money clearly is not the answer. So what is?

Not long ago I came home from working at the HTAC library after the usual Thursday Eucharist and formation session (on the foolishness of “Rapture”). Johanna told me that at home  she had listened to a CBC program in which poor Canadians shared their anxious and fearful lives in this wealthy, very wealthy, country of ours.  Why do we have so many poor for so long? Their fault?

For decades now 20% of all Canadian children live below the poverty line. Three Prime Ministers ago Jean Chretien made a promise that his government would tackle, if not eradicate, this serious problem. Children living below the poverty line tend to lack properly nutritious food for the body (too much fat and empty calories), and properly nutritious food for the mind (not enough books, art, organized sports, and too much TV). As economists might observe, “so much loss of future human capital!” Most certainly not children’s fault.

Why can’t we fix these problems? Simple, says Walter Brueggemann, if I read him right. Given the structures of our society (political, social, cultural), these problems seem un-fixable, at least if we lack “prophetic imagination,” the ability to think and feel outside the box.  Unless we exercise prophetic imagination, we are in the grip of “royalty” or “empire,” and we consider our current societal conditions normal, perhaps flawed at the edges, but normal overall. Even church people have become dulled to current situation. Here is Brueggemann. “In the Christian tradition, having been co-opted by the king, we are tempted to…[offer] cross-less good news and a future well-being without a present anguish. The task of prophetic imagination is to cut through the numbness, to penetrate the self-deception, so that the God of endings is confessed as Lord.” (pp 44, 45).

Brueggemann doesn’t suggest we form an alternate political party, or shape a national campaign to fix this problem or that. No, have your prophetic imagination stimulated by those old writings, and then tackle small, local problems. Find those neighbourhood situations that cannot be fixed within the tools of the existing political structures. Find those corners where hope, peace and joy do not exist, and where the soil for “growing” those good things seems barren. At the end of his book he lists some of the specific ones he knows.    

Advent. When Jesus is born, shepherds rejoice – the despised and marginal of their days.  Magi come…but from the faraway East not from the Promised Land. Herod hears about it…and kills baby boys. Religious leaders hear about it, but none come to worship. The Empire couldn’t be bothered. That is, until the prophetic imagination exercised by Jesus became a public nuisance. Then the empire (Rome and the Temple) crucified him.

It’s a good thing that we read prophets during Advent. It gives us opportunity to weep before we rejoice.  But then, let’s not overlook these poets during the other eleven months of the year.  And for reading those old voices properly, read Brueggemann’s book.   

Who was Herod?

Perowne, Stewart

Herod the Great: His Life and Times.

New York, Dorsett Press,1956

Review by Adrian Peetoom

This may be an old book, but it is a valuable one for whom “Herod” arouses curiosity. After all, this man played a role in Matthew’s account of the birth and early life of Jesus, by having all babies in Bethlehem killed. But what kind of a man was he?

It turns out, a powerful and attractive figure who played prominent roles in the politics of that region for many decades. Friend and confident of a number of Roman emperors. Entrepreneur, politician, statesman, general, fighter, lover.  Above all a builder, whose architectural achievements were famous, and whose legacies can still be found both in Jerusalem and elsewhere.  By reading this book one gets a solid grounding in the politics current in the decades prior to the birth of Jesus. Ironically, as he was  born a descendant of Ishmael (an Arab, in other words) but made his fame in Israel.

 Herod did his level best to become a good Jew, and he managed to gain the trust of the Sadducees and also of many of the ordinary folks of the region.  Only the Pharisees consistently opposed him.  This book also confirms the observations by many authors, namely that within the bosom of Israel always lurked the divide between the centrality of the Temple (Aaron and his descendants, the Sadducees) on the one hand, and Moses and the Torah (the Pharisees) on the other.  Of course Jesus was party to neither, and despised by both for his relativizing of both when compared to the central command to “love God and love one’s neighbor as oneself.”

The book records how Herod became a madman during the last ten years of his long life, his body and mind destroyed by too much food and too much alcohol, and perhaps venereal disease.  Even so, that very Christian love helps us recognize that in essence this was a prominent and in some ways attractive figure, child of his time but one with vision and often having the welfare of his underlings in mind.

Reading this book also made me conscious of the radicality of Jesus’s preaching of the Kingdom of God into a world of established power structures which considered ordinary human beings as fodder for slavery, taxes, labour and exploitation only. In his own way Herod tried to be kind and charming, but he was an Oriental despot just the same. He didn’t like the threat of Jesus as a baby, and his descendant Herods wouldn’t like Jesus as an adult.        

The New Atheists

The New Atheists: Two books for Christians to read.

1.       Hitchens, Peter. “The rage against faith: how atheism led me to faith.”

Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010.

2.       McGrath, Alister. “Why God Won’t Go away: Is the New Atheism Running on Empty?”                   Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2010.

Who are the “New Atheists?”

In recent years a new form of atheism has hit various media. Traditionally, atheism occupied a quiet corner of public consciousness, representing a bowing out rather than an energetic  campaign of some sort. McGrath observes that those atheists tended to be agonistics, actually, who claimed that they did not let any awareness of God rule their lives. However, the New Atheists are not merely content to deny the existence of God when asked. They want everyone else to become an atheist as well. Four names figure specifically. Two scientists: Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins. One journalist: Peter Hitchens. One professor of philosophy: Sam Harris. Formidable brains, all four. Clever communicators also, especially Peter Hitchens (he died in late 2011). They use two main arguments:

i.                     All religion is violent. Even religious pacifist (like Stanley Hauerwas, a Christian) who enable others to remain violent.

ii.                   In the face of science and other forms of rational thinking, religion is irrational, and its claims are easily refuted.

In these books two Christian writers examine these claims. Both of them want us to know: we should carefully listen to these (often vitriolic) critics. For one thing, Christians have often used violence to get their way. The Crusades, the Inquisition, and the European religious wars of the 16^th and 17^th centuries are but a few examples. A more recent example is the bombing of abortion clinics by US fundamentalist Christians and the murder of some physicians who perform abortions.  We should also keep in mind the language of violence used by such fundamentalist TV preachers like Austin’s John Hagee.  And for another, various fundamentalist and millenialist sects offer faith apologetics that are easily shown to be irrational. The recent end-of-the-world predictions are a case in point.     

Book 1 is written by Peter Hitchens, the brother of Christopher Hitchens. Christopher is a journalist  atheist on the warpath against every kind of believer in some kind of transcendental being, notably Christians and Muslims. He, and others like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, blame believers for every kind of social, political and historical ill.

Like his brother, Peter grew up in an England in which transcendental faith of any sort came to be despised as the delusion of the ignorant, and he himself bought that line. He and many others drifted into admiration for societies built on strict materialist principles, notably the USSR.  Blind to the evils of that society, they lauded the efforts of Lenin and Stalin to relegate faith to the deep recesses of one’s own soul, far removed from any public manifestation. But Peter spent a number of years as journalist in Moscow, and his experiences there led him to recant his atheism and embrace the Christian faith. (Malcolm Muggeridge did the same.)

This book is set up as a polemic with his brother (with whom he once engaged in a public debate). Although it is thin on the substance of his subtitle, it clearly lays bare the foundations on which his brother and others build their anti-faith stances. A useful book.

In book 2 famous British academic Alister McGrath, also a former atheist, takes on each of the four New Atheists in turn.  But he warns Christians: we should always pay careful attention to their critics, for these folks have a knack of finding our communal Achilles heels. While conceding that those four often score valid points, he also points out that invariably their critiques are aimed at a particular kind of Christian, those in the grip of an anti-intellectual fundamentalism so prevalent in the US.  All four are hopelessly ignorant of theology, especially of recent theological developments. In other words, they set up straw men and then knock them down with great shouts of hurrah. But in doing so they ignore evidence that would question their own stances.

For, as McGrath observes, “…God just won’t go away…Religion is back in public life and public debate (xiii).” And here is his summation after having carefully considered what the New Atheists have had to offer.

“It is not my intention to argue the case for the Christian faith in this short volume yet I can hardly fail to point out that the common Christian understanding of human nature over the last two thousand years is that we possess, and are meant to possess, a honing instinct for God… God can no more be eliminated from human life than our yearning for justice or our deep desire to make the world a better place. We having a homing instinct precisely because there’s a home for us to return to. That’s one of the great themes of the New Testament. We are created with an inbuilt yearning for God, famously expressed in the prayer of Augustine of Hippo (354-430): ‘you have made us for yourself and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in you.’ One of the reasons Christianity makes such a powerful appeal to humanity is its ability to make sense of our experience (145).”

I must admit: as I occasionally meet the opinions of these “four horsemen” of atheism, in print and on radio (once on CBC on my way to church on a Sunday morning!) my own occasional doubts about the validity of the Christian faith are stoked. When I was young I was taught that for Christians doubt was a sin. My life’s experience (and some writers) have taught me that that claim is false. Doubt is part of faith, with this proviso that it should not be entertained other than in community. Feelings of doubt should be shared, and liturgy is especially important when a believer isn’t so sure anymore.

And I’m not sure that McGrath’s claim as cited above will stand the test of time. In a recent survey, almost half of Americans surveyed said that they have no interest in (what we call) the “deeper questions of life”: ultimate meaning, life after death, place of suffering, typical religious concerns. So do we all have “an inbuilt yearning for God” like an opposable thumb, or is this merely cultural, a remnant of an earlier age? I wonder.        

Yet I heartily recommend these books, especially book 2.     

Burgess, John P.  Why Scripture Matters: Reading the Bible in a time of Church Conflict. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998.

The author is a Presbyterian professor of theology, and speaks out of a particular context. The Presbyterian community, like other mainline churches, has had to deal with various internal conflicts, the latest of which is tensions around gay and lesbian issues. Burgess has noted how advocates on whatever sides tend to use Scripture as a weapon. “We appeal to a select handful of passages to justify our position but lack the capacity to order Scripture as a whole. We say that the Bible matters, but spend remarkably little time actually reading it.” (XV – my emphasis)

With respect to the relationship of individual believer to Scripture, he observes that, “Too often, people’s sense that the Scriptures matter is little more than a sentimental attachment to something long gone, such as a childhood experience (2).” “In a time of biblical illiteracy, Scripture has become little more than a sentimental idea, a vague hope for something secure, unchanging, and right. The existence of the book seems to be reassuring, even if we end up consulting it neither too often nor too closely (23).” The effect of this unfamiliarity with Scripture results in this: “We [Christians] lack a shared narrative – a common story of who we are and what ultimately matters to us  - that would enable us to sort out [the deluge of information coming to us through the media], and to determine which of it is valuable and which is merely distracting (31).” “We are simply unable to approach the text (of Scripture) as mediating the transcendent, that is, an encounter with the living God and this God’s will for our lives (32).”

Even though all Christian churches keep confessing that Scripture matters, matters a lot, neither from church worship, nor from the lives of individual Christians, it seems to matter all that much in actual practice. Especially in the lives of individual Christians ignorance of Scripture is widespread. So how do we recover familiarity with Scripture?

His first point: “The language of Scripture, even in translation, is a kind of poetry…It offers us a unique way of putting reality together. I believe that we will rediscover the compelling power of Scripture only if we allow it to speak to us as a poetic-like word that reframes our way of seeing the world and understanding our lives (39).” And “The struggle to recover Scripture is, in a sense, the struggle to recover poetry.” He says this after having explained that Scripture cannot be read simply as a sourcebook of [doctrinal] information, or as a way to have one’s emotions stimulated. “Scripture is a sacramental word that points beyond itself. Scripture is commentary on the reality of the risen Christ (42).”  He quotes W.C. Smith who says that Sacrament “bespeaks divine initiative, and human involvement, plus the empirical object that mediates [the book]” (43). Scripture and great poetry share the capacity to lift us up out of our ordinary selves, and to put us in touch with the ideal (46).”

His second major point is that communal Scripture reading takes precedence over individual reading. For one thing, we do not (cannot) read Scripture without interpreting it within the context of our own lives. He uses the example of a music score that does not become music until it is played or sung, and then each performance is unique. That leaves the door open to such a variety of individual interpretations that none comes to matter. But within a church-worship context individual interpretations can be challenged, refined, altered, and become a joint understanding. Citing theologian Lindbeck, Burgess observes that through Scripture experienced in context we come “to know God in the Christian sense [which is] to become a member of a community that engages in particular practices and adheres to particular beliefs. Scripture is constituted less by symbols or propositions than by a basic narrative that unifies Scripture’s diverse materials and shapes the community’s sense of faithfulness (40).” But Burgess adds that understanding Scripture as sacramental ads a vital element. “In this sacramental understanding, Scripture sets forth the living Christ. In his presence, we find ourselves transformed into his image and incorporated into his body, the church. We have not simply chosen the community. We are not members of it simply by virtue of the commitments that we have made to it. Rather, by God’s grace, we experience the Christian community as God’s gift to us in Christ (51).”

Receiving Scripture as sacramental requires that “We will nurture a piety of the Word that respects Scripture’s revelatory potential. We will humbly submit to insights and perspectives that break through entrenched positions. We will stand in awe and wonder before a word that is God’s living Word, Christ himself, alive and in our midst (5).”

He suggest four disciplines of that piety in key chapter 4.

* Reading Scripture aloud

For as much as we can, also in our homes. As poetry is meant to be read aloud (so much depends on how it sounds), so is Scripture (most of which arose out of oral traditions). Burgess observes that “…when Scripture is spoken, we are dramatically reminded that Scripture consists of more than words on a page. Scriptures draws us into relationship with the living Lord (61).” 

* Reading Scripture in community

“…we would do well to recover disciplines of reading Scripture in community (62)…to test their interpretations against the deeper wisdom of the community (63).”

* Reading Scripture in context

We need to read all of Scripture within the larger context of the whole. For one thing, much of the New Testament echoes the Old. He quotes Catholic historian Jean Leclercq who observes “…a scriptural phrase will suggest quite naturally allusions elsewhere in the sacred books. Each word is a hook, so to speak; it catches hold of one or several others which become linked together…(68).”

* Memorizing Scripture

As one who never mastered the art of memorization of text I’m dubious that this will become a regular practice. Moreover, as he observes, “In a word-weary world, memorization is a lost art (69).”

 I highly recommend this book. It makes the case for familiarity with Scripture, and makes worthwhile suggestions towards increasing that familiarity. One minor quibble: I found it lacking one specific emphasis. It seems to me that all that the impact of Scripture as the Word of God is predicated on familiarity with the overall grand narrative of Scripture. And that awareness needs to be established in the home, where families read aloud Scripture, perhaps using children’s bibles. That overall familiarity is implied but not emphasized. Unless that background is firmly established in Bible readers, the impact of portions is less than it might be.