Christianity and culture

Review: Towards an Incarnational Spiritual Culture

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Cover image for "Towards an Incarnational Spiritual Culture" by Gordon E. Carkner

Towards an Incarnational Spiritual Culture, Gordon E. Carkner (Foreword by Iain Provan). Wipf & Stock (ISBN: 9798385203772), 2024.

Summary: The Incarnation and our quest for identity, addressing the rootless identities of modern gnosticism and expressive individualism.

We expressed it as “finding ourselves” in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. But the quest for identity didn’t end with Baby Boomers. Over the course of my life, I’ve witnessed a succession of “quests” to find identity in acquisitiveness, political causes, one’s ethnicity, sexuality and gender, and in a kind of designer spirituality cobbling together beliefs and practices drawn from diverse source into a personal enlightenment package. Yet, as Charles Taylor has observed, the fragility of our identity is evident in the ways we wall ourselves off from others as “buffered selves.” We find ourselves at times alienated even from our embodied life let alone an objectively existing Transcendent.

Gordon E. Carkner, drawing on the insights of Taylor, Christopher Watkin and others identifies this fragile identity as rooted in modern forms of Gnosticism and articulates a robust alternative rooted in the Incarnation. He begins by contrasting both ancient and modern forms of Gnosticism with spirituality rooted in the Incarnation. He notes the disdain of Gnosticism for the body and for the Transcendent entering our embodied existence. It is an attempt to achieve a spirituality both apart from the body and a God who created bodies.

Carkner proposes instead that identity may be rooted in a God who has spoken, in an I-Thou relationship brought to its height in the incarnate Christ, marrying the spirit and embodied life. Thus, he gives dignity to our embodied lives. Going on, he explores the idea of Christ as the Wisdom of God. Jesus embodied wisdom, the fulfillment of our quest to live well. Specifically, Carkner draws on the work of Hans Urs Von Balthasar in elaborating six pillars of incarnational wisdom. He points to James Davison Hunter’s idea of “faithful presence” as an example of how Christians incarnate that wisdom in culture.

Whereas Gnosticism is evident in a “will to uniqueness” or “expressive individualism,” Incarnational spirituality leads to embodied communities, expressed in “one-anotherness.” The quest for autonomy truncates the self, leaving people open to manipulation while embodied communities provide stability, perspective, and resilience. And finally, the Incarnation brings a Transcendent connection to our ethics and understanding of goodness, rather than the individual defining and sourcing their ethics within themselves.

In summing up, Carkner has distilled extended philosophical discussions into a vision for incarnational spirituality. Consequently, every sentence is loaded with meaning, requiring close reading. He offers an alternative to the fragile and fragmented identities of post-modernity. All of this is rooted in the ancient Christian belief in the Incarnation. Carkner frames our contemporary quest for identity in terms of the classic contrast between Gnostic and Incarnational spirituality. That God became man addresses our alienation from ourselves, from others, and the Transcendent. And it provides a basis for community and the pursuit of the good.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Claiming the Courageous Middle

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Cover image of "Claiming the Courageous Middle" by Shirley A. Mullen

Claiming the Courageous Middle, Shirley A. Mullen. Baker Academic (ISBN: 9781540967046), 2024.

Summary: Claiming the courageous middle in a polarized time as a risky and redemptive adventure of pursuing a hopeful future.

Since 2016, and perhaps far longer, I’ve lived in the middle. I cannot identify with either of the extremes in our polarized society. I’m not a moderate. I describe myself as a “third way” person, whose life is shaped by Jesus and his kingdom. And neither the left nor the right encompass what I believe is the Bible’s vision for a flourishing society. I’ve often felt lonely in that place and wondered what I have to contribute.

Shirley A. Mullen gives me hope that I am not alone. She even uses the “third way” language I’ve often used to describe the role of Christians in society. She describes a home not unlike my own that fostered both devotion and a love of learning. But she was encouraged early to step boldly and not defensively into both. Her grandfather told her that if something showed Christianity not to be true, he wanted her to know. She traces her journey through academia to the college presidency at Houghton College. There, she found herself often in the middle of groups that wanted her and the college to take their side. And she discovered the power of staying in the middle, and the courage, and risks that involved.

The Power of the Middle

Mullen contends that the middle is a place of courage and not a place for the wishy-washy. Firstly, it is courageous to remind people of their finiteness and fallenness, to adopt the posture of a humble learner. Secondly, the middle calls for a willingness to explore complexity and ambiguity to find better solutions rather than settle for the simplifications that substitute for solutions. Finally, the middle seeks the common good rather than defining the world as “us/them” and “winners/losers.”

But is the middle way biblical? After all, there are truths to believe or deny, commands to obey or disobey. And Mullen acknowledges this but also points to an underlying narrative of God working redemptively amid a fallen world where each person continues to have infinite worth before God. To illustrate her point, she highlights examples of Joseph, Moses, Daniel, Esther, Paul, and Jesus himself as those who worked in middle spaces.

However, the middle space is a risky space. It means the possibility of being attacked on both spaces. As a historian, she offers nine examples in history where this was so. And as a college leader, she speaks of the dangers of loss of trust, the loss of cohesion in one’s base, and creating unfulfilled expectations. But the other side of risk is benefits, and she sees a number of these. Among these are gaining a larger perspective on the issues, finding new options that serve both sides, and building new community on common ground.

Having cast the vision for the middle space, she gets down to the practicalities of claiming the courageous middle in a polarized time. Beginning with remembering our stories and framing one’s convictions, she encourages finding a community of kinship, apprenticing, and finding places to work redemptively in the church and the world. Toward that end, she offers a number of examples of individuals and organizations, both Christian and secular, working in the middle space.

Concluding Thoughts

I found this both a bracing and encouraging call to step into the work of the middle way. Mullen cites the many places in higher education, in civic affairs, and other places where good work may be done. Yet it seems like a “mustard seed conspiracy,” to use a phrase from Tom Sine, one that works in small and perhaps hidden ways.

But what about the powerful national interests battling each other? I sometimes wonder if the only way to change that is a subversive one of taking the air out of their efforts by grassroots efforts that engage citizens in a better way. Hopefully, they will demand better behavior from those who serve them in political office. Claiming the courageous middle in a polarized time seems like a long game. While Mullen offers a few examples of people who were in it for the long haul, like William Wilberforce, we need more examples and instruction on persisting over the long haul. That just might be a good idea for her next book!

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Strange Religion

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Strange Religion, Nijay K. Gupta. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2024.

Summary: Roman society thought Christians weird for both their beliefs and practices, and yet oddly compelling.

The early Christians in Roman society were weird. Strange. They weren’t trying to be. But their faith resulted in them standing apart from others in Roman society. Their beliefs and practices broke with religious conventions. Yet some found them strangely compelling and their movement kept growing. nijay K. Gupta transports us back to first and second century Roman culture to help us see why they were thought so strange.

He breaks his study into four parts. The first shows how strange becoming Christian was. In Roman society, the gods just were, and there were lots of them. One didn’t choose to believe in a god so much as did the things to stay on good terms with the gods, pax deorum, or “peace with the gods.” There were regular practices to appease the gods. No one thought about friendship with the gods, just staying on their good side. Then Christians came along talking about believing–that there was one God, that Jesus came as the image of God in human flesh, and thus they made no images. Faith had both content and was personal–people trusted in God because of Jesus, saw them in a covenant friendship with God. What’s more, this Jesus who they worshipped as the image of God died a despised death on a Roman cross and his followers claimed that he physically rose and, because of this, they believed they would one day bodily be resurrected. Strange, huh? They also thought it was dangerous, not a religion but a superstition that could endanger the social order. It was innovative rather than ancient, ecstatic rather than ritualized, individual rather than corporate, and desperate, as in intense in devotion, rather than ritually effective.

Then there was the matter of what they believed–unbelievable things! They believed in the supremacy of Jesus as Lord over all, not one of a company of gods. There was no smoke and blood of sacrifices but simply worship. Rather than believing in shrines and temples as “spiritual hot spots” to connect with the God, they believed themselves indwelt with God through the Holy Spirit, enabling them to worship and connect with God anywhere. Finally, they thought differently about time, not as an annual calendar of festivals to the gods, but in terms of what has been fulfilled in time and what is yet to be fulfilled–is it time yet?

They were strange in how they gathered to worship–privately in houses rather than at appointed times in public at temples. It led to a lot of rumors. There was the language of family–brother and sister. Instead of priest, the were led by the head of the household, who presumably managed his own household well. And these gatherings broke social conventions with rich and poor, slave and free, men and women at table together. It was also a priestless gathering, with Christ their priest, whose sacrifice for them was remembered in the bread and cup of shared meals. They responded to him in offered lives, songs of praise, and prayers as he had taught them. All in these private household gatherings.

Apart from the mystery cults, Romans didn’t want to get too close to their gods. By contrast, Christians sought to become like Christ, to imitate Christ. And what they imitated stood out. They sought to follow Christ in his humility, his love, righteousness, and purity–not qualities sought after by the Romans. The status-toppling life of Jesus from Son to despised servant who died upturned all social hierarchies, leading to a radical equality, as already noted. But Gupta pauses at this point to observe their imperfections. They fought and split. They did not protest the institution of slavery. and they slandered each other and spoke judgmentally, making statements that would later be used to justify anti-Semitism.

So what made these strange people so compelling? Gupta speculates:

“Some say it was the promise of immortality. Some say it was the networking savvy of spreading the religion in an organized across the whole empire. Some say it was the attraction of monotheism. Some say it was the teaching on morality. I am sure all of these are factors. But I can’t help but believe it was the people, the Christians themselves. In the first century a Roman encounter with Jesus was probably going to happen through a small community of Christians. This community had to be compelling.”

One can’t help but reflect on the parallels and differences in our own social setting. It makes me wonder if we are thought strange and weird and dangerous and compelling in ways that reflect the gospel of the kingdom of Jesus. Are we thought strange because we impoverish ourselves to help those with even greater needs in our midst? Are we thought weird because renounce consumerism and unsustainable living on our planet as well as self-promotion for ways of hidden service? Are we thought dangerous because we challenge national pretensions to imperial greatness for the sake of the advance of God’s transnational kingdom, and because we welcome the “others” that our politicians consider dangerous? Are we thought compelling in a society of epic loneliness because we really function as family, especially for those who have none? What troubles me as I write this is that by and large, I don’t think these are the ways we are found to be strange, weird, and dangerous. And I wonder if we are found compelling in consequence?

What strikes me in Gupta’s account is that the early believers weren’t trying to be strange, weird, dangerous, or compelling. They were struggling, imperfectly to be sure, to follow Jesus, to become like him. Their lives, their practices, including their transformed social relationships, were shaped by what they believed, by who they believed. And this makes me ask, quite simply, are we?

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: The Evangelical Imagination

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The Evangelical Imagination. Karen Swallow Prior. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2023.

Summary: A consideration of the images, stories, metaphors that constitute the “social imaginary” of what it has meant to be an evangelical.

A number of commentators both within and outside evangelicalism have tried to make sense of the evangelical movement in North America at a time when it is in crisis and many are deserting churches or even the Christian faith associated with that movement. Karen Swallow Prior grew up in this movement, imbibed its culture, and taught at one of its flagship institutions for many years. She writes as an insider who has seen its strengths and flaws and has not given up or departed.

The premise of this book is that every culture has a “social Imaginary,” a term drawn from Charles Taylor, that refers to the shared stories, metaphors, and images by which a culture makes sense of the world and itself. In this work prior unpacks a series of terms and the stories and images evangelicals by which evangelicals have articulated both their own culture and its interaction with the world: awakening, conversion, testimony, improvement, sentimentality, materiality, domesticity, empire, reformation, and rapture. She uses the tools of her academic discipline of English literature to explore these ideas both in literature and in evangelical and wider popular culture.

Each chapter explores the development of the particular term or metaphor. For example, Prior traces the idea of “testimony” in both Dickens Hard Times (with Mr. Gradgrind’s “facts” about a horse a far cry from its meaning) and Scrooge’s “conversion” testimony in A Christmas Carol. She explores how testimony and the literate culture that acompanied it might be traced through Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and on to accounts by Thomas à Kempis, John Newton, Philip Doddridge, and William Wilberforce. And she chronicles the rise of “evangelically speaking” where telling a good story takes precedence over truth and the necessity of being able to tell one.

Part of the power of this book is to show how the distinctive imaginary of evangelicalism is double-edged, having elements that genuinely reflect the work of God as well as toxic distortions of those elements.There is both the awakening of conscience to sin of the great awakenings and the resistance to awakening to the systemic character of our nation’s racial sins in which “woke” becomes pejorative. Conversion reflects a concern that one not be a Christian in name only but be transformed through new birth into abundant and eternal life with Christ and yet becomes truncated if it does not lead to the continuing conversion of being formed into Christlikeness in all of life. Even empire might reflect the aspiration that “Jesus shall reign where’er the sun/does its successive journeys run” that fueled genuine advances of Christianity to many parts of the world, only to be co-opted by the empires of white nations that colonized much of the world, or even the entrpreneurial evangelical ministries that built their own empires, often around human personality.

At the same time, what makes this book a joy to read is Prior’s ability to move between literature, history, and popular culture as she does in her chapter on “sentimentality” in which she ranges English and Scottish philosophy to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, to Sallman’s Head of Christ, and to the art and personal habits of Thomas Kinkade. All this is reflected in her intriguing subtitle “Uncle Tom, Sweet Jesus, and Public Urination,” the last part of which I will leave you the fun of discovering.

Prior’s point in this exploration is perhaps articulated best when she writes, “To be a product of a subculture–to inherit unthinkingly, uncritically, and assumingly all its images, metaphors, and stories–is to plagiarize a faith” (p. 218). In her chapter on reformation, she contends that evangelicalism is in a time of reckoning. We cannot unthinkingly parrot the metaphors that have shaped us without being re-formed in the way of Christ, shedding the accreted distortions of the evangelical imagination. Prior points the way toward this in her final chapter on “rapture” where she concludes that we should not focus on being caught up with Christ in some future “rapture” but be “enraptured by him, to be beholden to him, to be taken by him” (p. 258) here and now.

I’ve sometimes wondered if the problem of evangelicalism is a lack of imagination. Prior’s book suggests to me that it may not be a lack of imagination but what we’ve been imagining. Prior takes a critical step back, aided by both literary and cultural interlocutors to help us identify what is often assumed, to question it, and under God’s grace, to give up our feeble imaginations for the robust imagination of Christ and his kingdom.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Review: American Idolatry

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American Idolatry, Andrew L. Whitehead. Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2023.

Summary: Drawing on sociological research showing the association of racism and xenophobia with Christian nationalism, argues of the dangers of the idolatries of power, fear and violence to the American church.

My exposures to Christian nationalism are of the anecdotal character–the heartbreak of pastors whose people forsake sound teaching for a message of nationalism laced with fear and calls to the assertion of power or even to violent uprising. I also know the heartbreaking work of walking alongside young people “de-constructing” their faith because of alienation from churches that have become captive to such messages, which seems so unlike what they’ve encountered of Jesus in the gospels.

Andrew Whitehead articulates with academic rigor the concerns I have in my personal encounters. He writes as someone growing up within evangelicalism who wrestles with whether it is possible to be both Christian and patriot (yes) and how Christian nationalism is different from both. As a Christian, he argues that Christian nationalism is an empty, hollow philosophy rooted in idolatries of power, fear, and violence. As a sociologist, he notes studies that show how the embrace of Christian nationalism is one of the best predictors of both racist and anti-immigrant attitudes.

He begins with defining Christian nationalism as the conviction that civic life should be organized according to a particular form of conservative Christianity. This includes a moral traditionalism that maintains social hierarchies (between men and women, economic classes, races, and outsiders) and supports authoritarian social control to maintain those boundaries, including the threat and use of violence. He spends a chapter defining this, noting that signs of this in churches are American flags in sanctuaries, messages of fear or self-interest from the pulpit, “Celebrate America” services around July 4, defense of seeking access to power, comfort with the use of violence, and us versus them thinking.

The next three chapters look at three manifestations of idolatry, which he describes, quoting Kaitlyn Schiess as the “capitulation to a different story and set of values. Idols make promises of protection and provision, and they require allegiance. He looks at the focus on using power to benefit “us” versus seeking the common good of all, and contrasts this with the approach of a Jesus who “turns the other cheek. For example, are we concerned with defending our religious liberty or protecting the religious liberty of all? Then he looks at how fear becomes an idol attracting followers by evoking fears around race, immigrants, and religion and contrasts this to the teaching of Jesus who calls his disciples to “fear not.” He notes for the example the evoking of the fears of the presence of immigrants leading to higher crime rates when in fact the crime rates among this group are lower. Finally, Whitehead considers how Christians have legitimated the use of violence in the assertion of power to attain the goals of conservative Christianity, as visibly evident in the January 6 effort to seize the Capitol building and prevent the Constitutional certification of the election and succession of the presidency. Whitehead believes this to be deeply embedded in our history both with Indigenous people and Blacks maintaining first slavery, and then racial subordination. Again he contrasts this with the command of Jesus to “lay down your sword.”

Chapters six and seven then discuss how power, fear, and violence associated with Christian nationalism are connected empirically with racism and xenophobia. He offers suggestions for readings and one of the most important suggestions he offers is for white churches to relinquish social control, sharing the example of Shalom Community Church’s reparations efforts and relnquishing all controls of funds collected to Black religious and community leaders. He observes how we will go on short-term mission trips but want to refuse entry of people from the same countries to the US. He profiles the Neighbor to Neighbor ministry that has worked to welcome immigrants and how it has replaced fear with joy.

In his concluding chapter, he speaks of the challenge to tell better stories than the idol stories the Christian nationalism has embraced. I think this is spot on. My sense is that the appeal of Christian nationalism is that it offers both a cause and a sense of being empowered, and yet these are not derived from the gospel of Jesus and his kingdom. I’ve been saddened oftentimes by not only how destructive and divisive is Christian nationalism. I’m saddened by how small it is compared to the grand narrative of the gospel that brings both personal and social transformation, breaking down every barrier, and accomplishing through spiritual power and the power of love what political power and armed violence can never achieve. Whitehead’s use of examples of ministries that are doing this are important–stories that can be seen and not just talk are necessary.

Whitehead’s book is also important in confronting where elements of Christian nationalism have crept into our churches. I wonder, though, how many such churches will read this. I suspect that a more significant audience may be those who have been part of such churches in the past who need to come to terms with this past, and perhaps the unconcious biases that they carry from these, even if they have reacted against the church. Reflection, lament, repentance, and embrace of the gospel offer a path of spiritual reconstruction, and this book can help point the way.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Review: From Pandemic To Renewal

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From Pandemic to Renewal, Chris Rice. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2023.

Summary: Addresses eight global crises exposed by the COVID pandemic and how Christians may be agents of healing and transformation.

We’ve been through a crisis unlike what most of us have ever faced. Not just some of us in some places. But all of us. In every place. It’s one that has left its marks in our bodies, in our families and social networks, in our politics. Even where the marks are not visible, there are scars on our psyches. That’s what a deadly global pandemic does. And it exposed other crises in our world–political polarization, inequities, corruption, international tensions and a crisis of truth. For many, it exposed a poverty of spiritual resources, evident as much as anything in what seems our frantic effort just to move on and put the pandemic behind us. But the marks remain, and the crises the pandemic exposed remain. Christians are a people who don’t believe in moving on, but in renewal and transformation, often out of suffering, deep pain, and crisis. That’s because we believe in a God who has entered the world’s suffering, pain, and death in his Son, and who brought life, renewal, and transformation out of the darkest hour. But the question is, how does this bear on our experience of the last years and the crises we continue to face?

Chris Rice has lived a life at the intersection of the world’s pain and the gospel’s renewing power, from interracial community development efforts in Mississippi, to the halls of academia, to international relief efforts, and to pleading the cause of the world’s poor at the United Nations. Then the pandemic isolated him for a time in New England with his father and gave him to think about the challenges and opportunities of renewal in a post-pandemic world. In this book he identifies eight crises exposed more clearly during the pandemic and transformative Christian practices to address these crises. His eight chapters dealing with these are:

1. Bearing Joy for a World of Frantic Anxiety. In a world of rising anxiety expressed in a focus on activity, excessive positivism and activism turned to violence, Rice proposes the virtue of joy born out of a life of contemplating being the beloved of God.

2. Centering the Vulnerable for a World of Rising Disparity. The pandemic, thought to be the great equalizer, exposed inequities in death rates, high stock values and long food lines, and great inequalities in the distribution of vaccines. The way of the gospel is the way of the Samaritan on the Jericho road, taking costly steps to focus on the world’s vulnerable.

3. Being Peacemakers for a World of Surging Polarization. Rice recounts some of the unhealed wrongs he has encountered among those with whom he works and the power of the word “we” as we think of who “our” people are. He speaks of the Antioch moment where the gospel crosses boundaries of hostility, of the church’s peacemaking mission as we pursue restorative justice and hold truth and love together in these efforts.

4. Redeeming Power for a World of Political Mediocrity. Rice assesses both the potential for great good and great evil in the exercise of political power. He considers our contemporary polarization, paralysis, and pessimism, and the value of political love in action for the sake of the vulnerable, practiced in prayer, pursuing “purple” spaces, and local opportunities to pursue the common good.

5. Making Transnational Disciples for a World of American Blinders. Rice talks about the American blinders of both how we may believe ourselves saviors of the world and our lack of perception of how American power is perceived elsewhere in the world. He invites us to grow as transnational disciples through expanding what we read, through empowering majority world leaders, and pursuing international friendships.

6. Pursuing Private Integrity for a World of Public Validation. For many of us, what we do, what we have, and what others think of us is the focus of our lives. Rice calls Christians to private integrity, who we are out of public view, through personal examination, vulnerability with others, and communal safeguarding.

7. Cultivating Moral Imagination for a World of Unprecedented Dangers. Amid the dangers of technological disruption, environmental degradation, and the bi-polar China-US conflict, he bids us to imagine a moral world yet to be through forsaking our reliance on technological solutions and our lust for dominion, through instilling hope, through “thinking little,” through practicing non-violent communication, and making climate change personal. He also advises that more Americans might spend time learning Chinese! I thought this perhaps the most prescient chapter in the book.

8. Renewing the Church for a World Longing for Hope. The pandemic, in Rice’s view, has been a time of pruning for the church, a prelude to its renewal. He believes renewal consists in knowing our destination, reforming Christian formation, going deep into congregational life, creating new wineskins for mission, learning to function as ambassadors in the public square, and rooting our lives in intimacy with Christ.

What is striking as I look over this list is that it is about the formation and renewal of Christian character. Joy. Vulnerability. Peacemaking. Political love. Discipleship. Integrity. Moral Imagination. All of this is woven in the context of ecclesial communities. Rice makes a compelling case that this renewal of Christian character has far-reaching consequences, extending to the anxious, the poor, those at enmity, to our politics, to the nations, to our social lives, and to the existential dangers of our time–whether technological, environmental, or nuclear apocalypses.

Chris Rice opens a conversation we desperately need to have. There is no getting back to life before the pandemic. We live in a different, and in many ways, scarier world. How then will the people of God live? Will we bring spiritual understanding to what we have been through, and to how we might live amid the dangers and challenges and opportunities of our new situation? Will we stop fighting old battles and resist the temptation to simply return to our old patterns? This book, including the discussion guide provided for groups, can be an instrument for Christian communities to take stock and discern what it can mean to hope for renewal out of the ruins of these last years.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.