Wallis, Gill, Caputo I thank you

I have read a few books in my life - enjoyed many etc. Yet I can name a few that I think had and continue to have an influence on me as a person shaping, defining, and redifining my theology.

One of the first was a book by Jim Wallis called The Call to Conversion the 1970 edition I think (thus not one in picture). I bought it late 70's as a young keen evangelical and thought it was about leading people to Jesus. Instead it was about having being converted to Jesus we needed to be converted to issues of social justice, the poor, non-violence. Not sure how much I got on the first reading but it resonated with my soul and entered my spiritual blood stream in a way that I am still trying to work out. The themes that Wallis raised here still resonate and inspire me and help explain why over the years it has been listening to folks like Wallis, Campolo, John Smith, Ched Myers that have helped me keep the faith when their message has not been the dominant Christian voice I have been exposed to.

 

 

A second book for which I don't have a picture was The Fringes of Freedom by Atholl Gill. Gill was an Australian Baptist and New Testament scholar. The book was published I think in 1990 and was sent to me from Australia by my friends Jeanette Matthews and David Hunter. It was a book about following Jesus, community, care for the marginalised. It involved a series of chapters and bible studies etc. It was from this book that I got the idea of 'Committed at the Core and Open at the Edges' as the ethos for Church life as was subsequently adopted at Kirkintilloch Baptist Church. Indeed if I ever get to write a book on the Church I would love to give it that title. Crucial for me is that the Jesus who defines (redefines?) holiness and sinlessness etc. could both issue to Matthew a call to leave everything and also then sit with outcasts and sinners as friends. Radical discipleship and welcoming hospitality were both features of God defined holiness. Indeed it could be argued that open hospitality is an expression and outworking of that which we call holiness as defined by Jesus. I recently read from this book in class on the theme that we find our identity in relationship with other people and was reminded what a good book it was.

A third book read much more recently and which I am presently reading again is Caputo's book: What Would Jesus Deconstruct.  Oh I love it. It is such fun as it engages the classic In His Steps with postmodern ddeconstruction centred on the person of Jesus Christ. Caputo so gets in this text the deconstructive inner power of Jesus that has the potential ever to move the Church towards the coming Kingdom the latter being something present but not fixed and always coming and therefore free from our absolutisng of it. This book merges with my own anabaptist leanings in a postmoderm mix with its emphasis on Jesus Christ as the centre of our faith and as the only credible inner source for Church renewal in the light of current missional challenges. James K. A. Smith writes in the foreword: 'Here is a book in the tradition of John the Baptist, out to make was for a Messiah who, when he shows up, will ruin all our parties'.

What all these books clearly have in common is a focus on Jesus as the centre of our faith and the example of discipleship thus leading us constantly beyond the safety our of our present into a future found in the pursuit of social justice and concern for the poor as we bear witness to the message of Jesus.

Comments

[Rob Sharp]

Thanks for that Stuart, I was reading Hirsch 'Untamed' this morning about the radical and attractive 'holiness' of Jesus being a far cry from the church's somewhat 'sanitised' view. They also alluded to personal encounter with Jesus as the only real basis and means of inner transformation and outer radicalisation. Have we lost something? Do we need a fresh encounter with the untamed Jesus? Earlier this week I reread John Wimbers, "What is the Spirit saying to the Church in the 90s" and was surprised to read in it a huge section all about the church of the 90s being a force for social justice. He was strongly encouraging Christians to be engaging within their communities especially among the poor and 'disenfranchised', the first time I had heard that term. But it has grown in me, in my 'spiritual bloodstream' as you rightly put it. Interesting how a word or phrase can catch us and never let go, until it produces something.