Faith and culture

Review: Becoming Neighbors

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Cover image of "Becoming Neighbors" by Amar D. Peterman

Becoming Neighbors

Becoming Neighbors, Amar D. Peterman. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. (ISBN: 9780802884121) 2026.

Summary: Seeking the local common good through shared tables, neighbor love, building together, and faithful presence.

Many of us have despaired as we look at the deep national divisions in the politics of our country. Why can’t our political representatives come together for the common good of all our citizens? I’ve about concluded that this is a quixotic quest and only a work of God can change things, which I still pray for.

But there is an old saw that “all politics is local.” Furthermore, while we are instructed to pray for our leaders, we are commanded to love our neighbors. In this book, Amar D. Peterman takes that command seriously and presses into what that love might look like in the real neighborhoods where we live. This follows the pattern of the incarnation, where God took on flesh and broke bread with real people.

In fact, Jesus spent a lot of time at tables. Peterman reflects deeply upon this as a core practice of neighboring. He explores why we would desire this and roots it in love of God and those with whom we share the table. In fact, we join what God is already doing in our neighborhood. We recognize God has already been loving our neighbors and we love them in God. So we look for good in those we encounter, believing the good God is present. We believe community is possible because the God who is present is community, the eternal fellowship of three persons in one Being. And because of the diverse nature of our communities, the goodness we encounter is a potluck. Each dish reflects the story of our neighbors.

Neighbor love isn’t a feeling but something we do. Peterman outlines six practices of neighbor love: compassion, humility, translation, resonance, lamentation, and accompaniment. The last four spoke to me. Translation speaks in the neighbor’s language. Resonance listens to the tone of our neighbors and matches it. Lamentation aches for and mourns what grieves our neighbors. Accompaniment is presence, showing up for others.

He describes neighbors as building together, and in fact, this happens, whether a playground, a community garden, or even a shared enterprise. We can take great encouragement that Jesus, our prophet, priest, and king joins us in this work. Prophets cast vision and clear rubble. Priests come with the vision of the table and sketch out what that might look like in a community-a food pantry, a shared dining space, a community garden. Then kings marshal the resources to support the vision and lead out in realizing it. But we will only know what to build through faithful presence, accompaniment.

Finally, Peterman explores what it means to live as neighbors. He suggests the image of being hopeful gardeners, believing in the power of Jesus to bring his resurrection life. Peterman also likens us to kintsugi artists, taking the given fragments and mending them together. Neighbor love is not controlling but waiting and working to see how God will bring the broken fragments of a neighborhood together.

What Peterman does in this book is cast a theological vision of neighbor love. I have to admit wrestling with what that means in our relatively private suburban neighborhood. I feel we are a long way from neighborhood potlucks. But our pastor has challenged us to get to know our neighbor’s names and pray for them. On walks, I’ve met some, and had to confess my chagrin at not knowing the names of those who’d lived as neighbors for some years. I do think restoring local community is a starting point. I wish there were more of a roadmap for what this looks like in neighborhoods like mine. Perhaps faithful presence, the attentive waiting to see what God wants to build is the starting point. And Peterman’s six practices of neighbor love are a good guide.

When I was in college ministry we talked about “developing world-changers.” But in my retirement years, I have to admit to resonating more with Peterman’s message of loving my physical neighbors well. That may actually be the greater challenge. It is certainly part of the greatest commandment!

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

Review: Untangling Critical Race Theory

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Cover image for "Untangling Critical Race Theory" by Ed Uszynski

Untangling Critical Race Theory, Ed Uszynski. InterVarsity Press (ISBN: 9781514004814) 2024.

Summary: By explaining the central assertions of critical race theory, offers constructive and critical assessment.

Until my retirement, I worked in collegiate ministry. In recent years, I increasing faced questions from concerned Christians about “Critical Race Theory” (hereafter CRT). I found it helpful to ask what my questioners meant by this term. Often, I discovered that my questioners often didn’t know what they meant but had heard concerns expressed in the media. I saw that it was important to untangle what critical race theory actually is from the media versions of CRT. As a Christian, I care deeply about separating truth from false accusation. I wish I had had this book!

Ed Uszynski describes his own journey of dealing with issues of race, from growing up in the Cleveland area, his observations of racist treatment of athletes in the sports ministry with which he worked, and his encounter with critical race theory in his doctoral studies. He describes his own attempts to parse out critical race theory in relation to his faith. This meant going back to its roots in Marxism. While Marx’s solution is disastrous, Uszynski found insightful his analysis of the ways capitalism oppresses whole classes of people. He saw the systemic realities Marx describe in the lives of his own parents.

More immediately, CRT arises from critical theory, which developed out of Marxism in the Frankfurt School. He begins by stating that “CT should be chastised for its illiberal, cynical, and unredemptive vision of the world.” Uszynski notes key themes of the insatiable pursuit of profit, the invisible influence of power, the on-the-ground conflict of politics, and the influence of Postmodernism. He observes that CT makes sense of life without God in a broken world. Specifically, it helps explain human alienation, it takes power seriously, it exposes problems with Capitalism, and it takes structural sin seriously, speaking for the oppressed.

From here, Uszynski traces the rise of CRT to Harvard Law Professor Derrick Bell in the 1970’s. Bell was asking why integration efforts weren’t working. He began to recognize how racist hierarchies and systems were embedded in American life. This work was further developed by Kimberle’ Crenshaw. Much of the work focused on how racism is embedded in social structures and reflected in laws, practices, and policies, despite civil rights efforts. Then Uszynski offers what I think is a key chapter in summarizing key tenets of CRT. You find CRT’s critiques of objectivity, of colorblindness, and the importance of the voice and experience of minorities.

Then, the discussion turns to why the varied responses to CRT. Uszynski distinguishes between CRT as a framework and as a faith. The former is helpful, and actually draws out many truths found in scripture about how sin may be systemic as well as personal (read the prophets), and how the powerful use structures and laws to their own benefit at the expense of others. The framework identifies injustices that Christians ought care for. Meanwhile, he recognizes how, for some, it has coalesced into a worldview, a kind of secular faith without the power of the gospel to bring lament, repentance, restoration, and reconciliation.

In a later part of the book, he offers two chapters addressing concerns that have been raised about CRT. He addresses the contention that CRT focuses too much on race, sees race everywhere, all the time, that all whites are racists, and that in the Marxist paradigm, all whites are oppressors and Blacks victims.] Furthermore, he addresses the contentions that CRT is divisive, judges everyone according to groups, blames us for others’ racist sins, and overplays systemic injustice and underplays personal responsibility.

For those looking for an unqualified endorsement of CRT or a merciless takedown of CRT, this is not your book. It will probably leave you angry. Uszynski moves beyond simplistic binaries to offer what is both a constructive and critical assessment. He also identifies five stumbling blocks to thinking Christianly about CRT. He recommends:

  1. Separate the secular culture conflict from the church culture conflict.
  2. Educate yourself out of crosscultural shallowness.
  3. Take seriously your theological myopia.
  4. Examine yourself for biblical selectivity.
  5. Confront your ethnic indifference.

As these points make evident, the book primarily addresses white Christians, and particularly evangelicals. This may sound like “wokism” to some. Instead, I read this as a serious effort to discuss what it means to be “awake” and engaged redemptively with realities of race. If you are willing to admit that you may not know what CRT is beyond the caricatures and want to dig in, this book is for you.

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

Review: Faith for This Moment

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Faith for this Moment

Faith for This Moment, Rick McKinley. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2018.

Summary: Explores what it means to live as a Christian in a polarized and secularized society, drawing on the idea of exile in scripture and proposing practices that sustain faithfulness in exile.

Rick McKinley, like many Christians, wrestles with what Christian faithfulness looks like for the church he pastors in Portland, Oregon, amid a secular and highly polarized American society. We can look for who to blame, resort to denial and despair, or recover an idea of understanding our situation upon which Jews and Christians have drawn through the centuries–the idea of exile.

McKinley traces the idea of exile through scripture, from the first exiles from the garden, down through Abraham and Sarah, Israel in Egypt, the Jews in Babylon, and the church scattered through the Roman empire. McKinley lays out the alternatives of how exiles live:

“[T]he way in which the people of God navigated their faithfulness to God in exile was not to burn Babylon or to baptize Babylon but to find distinct ways to bless and resist Babylon.”

He argues that our calling as exiles is both to bless and resist our “Babylons.” We need to recognize both windows of redemption, places where we can engage the culture around issues of shared concern such as the arts or the environment, and windows of opposition, such as our consumer culture. To be people who know where to bless and resist, we need two critical skills–the discipline of repentance and the practice of discernment. In repentance, we acknowledge our indifference to God and to our society and are converted by God to people who begin caring about the things God cares about. Discernment helps us know what faithfulness looks like in particular situations such as becoming a reconciling presence in a polarized society.

McKinley contends faithfulness is empowered and lived out through five critical practices:

  1. Hearing and obeying–the centering practice that holds the others together.
  2. Hospitality: overcoming fear to welcome the stranger
  3. Generosity: repenting consumerism to recognize money and time are gifts and not possessions.
  4. Sabbath: turning from busyness to embrace rest and relationships
  5. Vocation: moving from the drudgery of jobs to the holy joy of living out a calling.

McKinley’s vision is for the church as a healing presence in a divided society. He writes:

“The move I am suggesting is what Miroslav Volf called a move from exclusion to embrace. What if we began to envision a nation in which we didn’t simply tolerate our differences but engaged one another around those deeply held convictions? What if we moved beyond polite disagreement to demanding safety for those with whom we disagree and defending the rights of those who hold convictions other than our own? What if we truly believed that each of us bears the image of God and has something to offer the other? What new types of civility might emerge among us? This new kind of relating could create new possibilities of understanding, out of which relationships could be born and change could become tangible.”

Oh, that it were so! Beyond this healing vision, what I like about McKinley’s book is that it both reflects insights of the likes of Volf and Newbigin (I also wonder if he has read Charles Taylor, James K. A. Smith, and other who have wrestled with secularity), and distills the best of these into a readable and practicable book for the rest of us. Others have written about Christians as exiles, and about formative practices, but I have not often seen all this thinking summarized so succinctly and translated into the real-life practice of a church.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.