One In Jesus

[This series of posts won’t be a traditional book review. Rather, I’ll summarize parts of To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World by James Davison Hunter, and then I’ll add my own thoughts. I may criticize the book here and there, but I don’t have much to criticize.]

Liminality

“Liminal” is used by anthropologists and others to speak of the state of mind of an individual or community when they transition from one reality to another. As the Wikipedia says,

The liminal state is characterized by ambiguity, openness, and indeterminacy. One’s sense of identity dissolves to some extent, bringing about disorientation. Liminality is a period of transition where normal limits to thought, self-understanding, and behavior are relaxed – a situation which can lead to new perspectives. Continue reading →

[This series of posts won’t be a traditional book review. Rather, I’ll summarize parts of To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World by James Davison Hunter, and then I’ll add my own thoughts. I may criticize the book here and there, but I don’t have much to criticize.]

Hunter proposes an approach he calls “faithful presence within.” He summarizes the idea in “two essential lessons” —

The first is that incarnation is the only adequate reply to the challenges of dissolution; the erosion of trust between word and world and the problems that attend it. From this follows the second: it is the way the Word became incarnate in Jesus Christ and the purposes to which the incarnation was directed that are the only adequate reply to challenge of difference.

In other words, the church has to live the life of Jesus for the purposes of Jesus — and nothing else will do. Continue reading →

[This series of posts won’t be a traditional book review. Rather, I’ll summarize parts of To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World by James Davison Hunter, and then I’ll add my own thoughts. I may criticize the book here and there, but I don’t have much to criticize.]

The third and final essay in the book is “Toward a New City Commons: Reflections on a Theology of Faithful Presence.” This is where Hunter moves from critique to prescription.

I’m going to backtrack a bit. Hutson ends Essay 2 with a discussion of “Jesus and ‘Social’ Power,” which forms much of the basis for Essay 3. Hutson reviews the life and teachings of Jesus and concludes —

[T]he spirit that animates worldly power — whether held by individuals, social groups, communities, institutions, or social structures — naturally tends toward manipulation, domination, and control. Rooted in the deceptions of misdirected desire, it is a power that in its most coarse expressions would exploit, subjugate, and even enslave. …

It is this power and the spirit that animates it whose sovereignty Christ came to break. Continue reading →