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Mar
25
Written by:
host
3/25/2010 7:00 AM
 per•spec•tive: The relationship of aspects of a subject to each other and to a whole.
I love books that help me to gain a greater sense of perspective, and I have come to believe that a growing sense of perspective is a mark of a progressive Christian. This week, I've been reading two works that are ideal "bookends" (pardon the pun!) of the Christian experience. The first, Life in Year One: What the World Was Like in First-Century Palestine by Scott Korb, obviously takes the reader back in time to a world far removed rom our own. The second, A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That are Transforming the Faith by Brian McLaren, encourages the reader to consider where Christian faith is headed. Both are books I think make critical reading for anyone involved in faith formation ministries.
Life in Year One (Riverhead Books, 2010, 241 pp.) is, the author goes to pains to point out, not a book about Jesus. Instead, it seeks to place 21st-century persons in Palestine up until about the year 70 CE. Many books have done this before, of course. Some seek to do it visually, like the superb The HarperCollins Visual Guide to the New Testament. Others, like Crossan and Reed's Excavating Jesus: Beneath the Stones, Behind the Texts, are far more in-depth, too much so in fact for most average readers. In between these two is Scott Korb's new book, which paints word pictures in spritely, rich, and even humorous language, encouraging us to make he connections (and more often, see the disconnect) between that world and ours.
Life in Year One explores the life of persons in the first century through ten broad topics: an overview of the world, money, home, food, baths, health, respect, religion, war, and death. Each chapter provides enough detail to enable the reader to grasp the tremendous distance between our time and theirs, yet it largely avoids scholarly arguments and archaeological jargon that could cause the reader to lose interest. Korb does expand upon the text in fairly extensive footnotes, which are often more enjoyable than the rest of the text. (Take for example, this nugget in the chapter on food, where Korb explores the shift to a more centralized, agribusiness-like food economy: "What today we call Cargill and Monsanto and Perdue was, in the first century, known by the brand name Antipas. Or a bigger brand name still—Caesar.") Korb relies on a wide range of scholarly opinion, but largely seems most convinced by the more progressive interpretations of that ancient culture.
I have rarely felt so engaged when reading about this period. The chapter on money, for example, (a topic I've read a LOT about since my hobby is collecting first century coinage) was the single-best treatment of this subject I've come across, but every chapter expanded my sense of perspective and ability to put the biblical texts in a wider context. You'll end each chapter very thankful you don't live in that time and place (especially after reading his chapter on health. Yikes!) I think it would be a lot of fun to read this book with a group, especially if the leader could pull in relevant biblical texts to illuminate and illustrate the book's text.
 A New Kind of Christianity (HarperOne, 2010, 306 pp.) has already been widely reviewed, since McLaren has such a huge following (not to mention access to one of the best book marketing teams in the country.) I'll keep my review as a result to the essential information. Like Korb, McLaren's book explores ten big-picture topics that are undergoing major change in Christian theology and understanding today: our understanding of the biblical narrative; our view of authority; God; Jesus; "The Gospel"; the Church; sex; the future; pluralism; and Christian action. His premise is that our view of each of these has been shaped over the past hundred years or so by a Greco-Roman-influenced theology that created a mindset that Eden > Fall > Salvation > Heaven/Hell was the dominant biblical theme. Additionally (and I found this to be quite helpful), we have treated the Bible as a constitutional document rather than as "the library of a culture and community" (p. 81).
McLaren isn't necessarily covering new ground in this book, at least not for anyone who has been to a college or seminary where historical-critical study of the Bible is common or who has been introduced to the theological insights of major 20th-century Christian writers (e.g. Tillich; liberation or feminist theologians). But what I love about McLaren is that as a trained English major he has a really exceptional ability to craft a good sentence, construct a cohesive argument, condense difficult ideas into relatable metaphors, and synthesize the works of both conservative and liberal scholars alike into something rich and new and meaningful. Although I think there are definitely better and easier introductions to progressive Christianity, I think McLaren's book is among the best books for persons to read who are open to questioning their own more traditional perspective of Christianity. Evangelicals will no doubt slam McLaren for his views, but those who take the time to read him carefully will find that the way he frames the big questions gives perspective for additional dialogue and study.
This is definitely a book to be read in community, a point he makes clear in the final chapter, "Living the Questions in Community," where he writes, "As important as books can be, though, those of us who have been on this quest for a while generally agree that you can only read so many books…[A] new kind of Christianity must be embodied in both individuals and communities who practice it both in movements and institutions." (p. 244, 251) It's not a perfect book, but A New Kind of Christianity is one that will enable groups and individuals to wrestle with the meaning of and relevance for Christian faith in our time. ~ by Tim Gossett
Copyright ©2010 Different Voice
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