sustain:if:able kiwi

the lost (Asian and African) history of Christianity part 1

(This is part 1, part 2 is here).

Reading The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia–and How It Died has just been fascinating.

The book describes a vital and energetic first 1000 year period in Christianity, a period during which the Middle East, Asia and Africa where much more dominant than Europe. In so doing, it provides some contemporary myth-busters.

Myth one – Christianity is a Western religion. Take the city of Merv, located in what is now Turkmenistan. During the 12th century it was one of the largest cities on the planet. From the year 420, the town had a bishop, from the year 500 a seminary with a significant intellectual output including access to Aristotle (This was some 600 years before universities began to emerge in Europe).

Or take the fact that in 1287, a Christian bishop, in ethnicity from near Beijing, was sent by Kublai Khan to the Christian Europe. He turned at to meet the Pope, who was amazed at his “orthodox” faith.

Myth two – The Catholic (Western) church supressed various Gospels (of Thomas, Judas etc). Why then do church leaders throughout Asia and Africa show familiarity with these alleged supressed “gospels”, yet still reject them because they knew they were “late and tenditious.” (88)

Myth three – Christianity suffers when the other faiths emerge. Quite the opposite, “Christians needed to maintain their highest intellectual standards because of the constant competition they faced from other faiths.” (46)

Myth four – The church needs good leaders to grow. Not so, for “Syriac Christian writers used the word merchant as a metaphor for those who spread the gospel. One hymn urged:
“Travel well girt like merchants,
That we may gain the world.
Convert men to me,
Fill creation with teaching.” (63-64).

Myth five – Christianity and Islam are enemies. Actually, peaceful co-existence between Muslims and Christians occurred for nearly 500 years throughout the Middle East. While Muhammad received his first revelations in 610, it was not until the 14th century that sustained persecution led to a decisive collapse of Christianity through the Middle East, Asia and much of Africa. The Middle East even 100 years ago was a place of religious diversity: “an area in which Christians remained a familiar part of the social and cultural landscape.” (140-1).

Jenkins writes lucidly, pulling a huge amount of reading into clear, lucid prose. Only read this book if you’re willing to have your prejudices -that Christianity kills cultures and the Crusades are the only way the church has treated Muslims – challenged by careful historical study.

slap: book review of Christos Tsiolkas

With a holiday weekend forecast for showers and sleet, it was off to Borders for some fireside reading. The Slap by Australian writer Christos Tsiolkas caught my eye and less than 24 hours later, the last (of 483) page has turned.

Great read. A beautifully constructed portrayal of contemporary (Australian) family life. Writing first person, and thus stepping inside the skin of another is an art, yet Tsiolkas handles a wide range of characters – male and female, married and single, gay and straight – with ease.

The book begins with a family barbeque and a man slapping an errant child. The moment becomes a faultline for exploring what it means to human today – to raise children, to age, to migrate, to believe.

Centred on the suburb of Preston (streets I’ve walked with good friends) it deftly captures the pluralism and multi-cultural tensions of contemporary Australia – the racism of Australian pubs, the monosyllabic, yet internet-connected existence of teenagers, the laugh out loud descriptions of the suburbs:

“It was a tacky pokies pub in the middle of nowhere, boganville. Every street looked the same, every house looked the same, everybody looked the same. It was where you came to die. Zombies lived here. He could hear them monotonously tapping away at the machines.”

A book like this should be compulsory reading for all those doing ministry today, a thoroughly enjoyable and absorbing snapshot of the tensions of contemporary living, of love that endures, of the hope found in friendship.

(Winner of 2009 Commonwealth Writers Prize).

amos yong’s theology and disability chapter 6

Chapter 6 – Reimaging the Doctrines of Creation, Providence, and the Imago Dei. Rehabilitating Down Syndrome and Disability, pp. 155-193. (For earlier: see Yong’s Chapter one; Yong’s Chapter two; Yong’s Chapter three.)

This is a superb chapter. Yong points out how destructive to the disabled are traditional Christian understandings of creation. “Put most succinctly, if God is the creator and sustainer of the world and all that is in it, then God is also responsible for disability.” (162). Yong then explores what I would call “the dark side” of the theory of evolution: that is, that just as genetic variation ensures survival of the fittest, so it produces the chromosonal abnormalities including the likes of Downs Syndrome.

Given these observations, both of theology and of evolution, what follows is a reformulation of doctrines of sin and Fall, a movement from “the idea of divine omnipotence causing all events to divine omnicompassion redeeming all events.” (169) Yong’s use of the four fences of the Chalcedonian Creed is a creative refreshing of classical Christian understandings.

This continues as Yong turns to Jesus. He notes recent advances in neuroscience and an emergent (nothing to with church) anthropology, which defines humans in holistic and relational terms, and explores this as a potential way to move beyond more functional (people have value because of what they do) and materialistic (people have value because of what they earn) notions of being human. “A disability perspective exposes how modernity’s notions of freedom, autonomy, and expertise undermine the kind of social flourishing that comes with mutuality, reciprocity, and interrelationality.” (187)

Yong explores the nailscarred and tortured body of Jesus as a “disabled God.” This allows him to connect Jesus, creation, being human and disability. “God’s redemptive work as revealed in the cross and resurrection also illuminates divine nonviolence and nonintrusive action that effectively, even miraculously, brings life out of death, novelty out of impossibility, and beauty out of suffering and hardship.” (180)

This offers a way to respect and seek redemption for all human beings. “Hence, the question concerns not the dependence of the disabled on the nondisabled but the other way around: the nondisabled are dependent on the disabled, whom God has chosen to be a means of saving grace.” (188)

It is a fresh and challenging chapter. Yong has a creative mind. He is reading widely and summarising superly. All the time, his personal experience of disability lends authenticity and groundedness.

male spirituality at the movies

I went to see Men’s group at the movies today. Australian made, it is a slow moving, but excruciatingly honest inspection of what it’s like to be male. It is the story of 6 men, meeting weekly to talk. Over time they begin to explore the pain of their fathers, the loneliness of relationships and the bleakness of their grief. It takes time, but they realise that men can go on a journey of friendship and intimacy. Recommended viewing for all men IMHO.

I like to place alongside the movie Phil Culbertson’s New Adam: The Future of Male Spirituality which I found hugely helpful in my thinking about male spirituality. The book explores Bible texts that challenge men – Abraham’s relationship with his sons, David’s relationship with his sons, Jesus masculinity – and what it means to be male today.

And so for years when I pastored at Graceway Baptist, every Thursday fortnightly a group of men would meet. Since so much male conversation is defined by what we do and who we cheer, the two groundrules were no agenda and no sports talk, which left the challenge of how could we as men define our relationships. That was a great experience to be part of.

cartooning history: some thoughts on Margaret Mahy’s Awesome Aotearoa

I leafed through Margaret Mahy’s new children’s history of New Zealand last night. Given that she was banned from Christian radio, that I’m currently doing research on the cartoon genre and also lecture a course on Being Kiwi, being Christian, I was interested. Here are some random thoughts

– I liked the concept – New Zealand history for kids.

– I liked the way that space was given to tell of the Maori and French beginnings.

– I thought the missionaries got off lightly, noted for their role in Maori language learning, nor directly tagged with the supply of muskets to Maori.

– I was surprised in a book put out by a commercial press, to find grammatical errors, for example full stop instead of comma on page 18.

– I am not convinced of the mixing of cartoons and history. Cartoons often work by highlighting a particularity. What does this distortion do in a book titled “history”? So for example, the cartoon on page 39 referenced Samuel Marsden as the flogging parson. He was, but given that he exercised most of his ministry in Sydney, is this particular detail worth half of one page of a 125 page book about New Zealand history?

– And if it’s a book titled “history,” do things have to be true? So the cartoon on page 44, referencing the Treaty of Waitangi, has an army officer saying “Just how small can you make the small print Williams?” It’s sort of funny, but in a kids book, will kids get the joke? Or are they meant to laugh at all the cartoons, and so the cartoons are simply eye-candy, and not “history.” If so, that seems to me to be a trivialising of the genre of cartoons.

amos yong’s theology and disability chapter 3

Chapter 3 – Medicalizing Down Syndrome. Disability in the World of Modern Science, pp. 45-77.
At first this chapter is surprising, for it is rare to find medical history in a theology book. Yet it is consistent with Yong’s methodology and theology; his quest to be interdisciplinary and his belief that the Spirit is at work in the world, in unity and diversity (and hence in a plurality of disciplines).

This chapter provides a broader framework around Yong’s Chapter two. Just as attitudes to disability have shifted throughout church history, so they also have through medical history. “My claim, however, is that social and theoretical perspective have not remained static, and there have been substantial shifts in how intellectual disability has been conceived, examined, discussed, and engaged.” (47)

Modernity privileges science, medicine and technology and these have framed the way Down Syndrome has been conceived. Yong divides modernity into three periods: one of institutionalization, one of sociomedical control and another of independent living.

Technology is now a threat to the existence of those conceived with Down Syndrome. Development of IQ test. During 1930s-1960s, 50,000 people were sterilised in US, based on having a lower IQ and concern that they would reproduce their kind. In Nazi Germany, 2 million “defective” people were sterilised and more than 275,000 mentally and physically disabled were exterminated.

Jerome Lejeune, in 1959, discovered the chromosomal mutation from which Down Syndrome is derived. The development of prenatal testing has contributed to the fact that since 1989, 70-90% of Down Syndrome fetuses are aborted.

Does this allow them to avoid suffering? Yet is suffering caused by their impairments, or by the social prejudices and lack of support provided by society? What about the narratives of parents who find themselves transformed by the experience of parenting a mentally retarded child? What should decide the value of human life anyhow, instrumental or intrinsic worth?

At turn of 21st century, it is estimated there are 5 million people with Down Syndrome worldwide. With further technological advances now comes a whole new set of questions regarding schooling, marriage, parenting, aging.

“[W]e cannot but observe in the most forceful of terms the injustice perpetrated against people with intellectual disabilities over the last 150-plus year, much of it with the backing of the medical establishment.” (76) “The modern Enlightenment was anything but kind to those who did not measure up to the alleged standards of universal reason.” (77)

Where you aware of this “darker” side of modernity and medicalisation? How might churches care for couples and families who have a pregnancy diagnosed with Down?

reviewing Chasing Francis

Chasing Francis: A Pilgrim’s Tale is the fictional story of a supposedly successful mega church pastor who goes through a public meltdown. Sent to Europe for a holiday, he finds himself both fascinated and challenged by the life of Francis of Assisi. He finds a fresh vision both for his faith and for the church.

What makes the book interesting is the way it uses a historic figure, (Francis of Assisi), to shape a vision for the church. This places it in sharp contrast to books in the missional project like The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21 Century Church or Forgotten Ways, The: Reactivating the Missional Church, which look to the New Testament church for missional DNA.

(Another great example of the way a historic figure can shape contemporary emerging mission is the way Safe Space in Telford have drawn on Saint Brendan. Mark Berry is an excellent poetical missiologist. No book (yet), but their journey in worship is here).

The book is nicely written. The characters are a bit “high-culture” but that probably represents the context of the author, who ministers in Greenwich, Conneticut and

The study guide at the back is one of the more helpful I have come across, providing not just questions, but a helpful and stimulating array of quotes from a range of books, and thus providing some significant intellectual framing for this fictional account.

One disappointment is the way that the book affirmed Fancis’s commitment to reform the church from within, yet wrapped the plot resolution around church planting rather than church transition.

Overall, a stimulating read and a useful addition to one’s bookshelf.

Helpful quotes:
“The deeper I plunged into the heart of Francis, the more courage I found to dive into my own. The more I saw his love for the church and the world, the more I was inspired to follow his lead.” (92)

“The world is so hungry for God that God could only come as a piece of bread. We so long for joy that God even risked coming into the world in the form of intoxication, that risky thing called wine.” (96, quoting Gandhi)

“I was struck by the simple elegance of Francis’s strategy of ministry – simply read the gospel texts and live the life you find on its pages. What a concept. I wondered what Francis would say if he were the main speaker at a church-growth conference. Would anyone take him seriously.” (100)

“The church is realizing that there is an awareness of God sleeping in the basement of the postmodern imagination and they have to awaken it. The arts can do this … When the front door of the intellect is shut, the back door of the imagination is open.” (110)

“Francis taught me that if we spent less time worrying about how to share our faith with someone on an airplane and more time thinking about how to live radically generously lives, more people would start taking our message seriously.” (195)

amos yong’s theology and disability chapter 2

Chapter Two – The Blind, the Deaf, and the Lame. Biblical and Historical Trajectories.
Yong considers how “disability” has been portrayed in the Bible and in church history. “The reader should be warned that some of what follows may be discouraging and even depressing, especially when read by a person with disability looking for biblical edification.” (21). Notions of God healing in reality communicate that people with disabilities are in some way lesser in God’s Kingdom. Disability is linked to evil spirits in some New Testament texts (eg Mark 1:32-34), while other texts hint that disability is linked to personal sin (John 5:14). “Clearly, then, “disability” in the New Testament funtions rhetorically to call attention to negative realities such as sin, evil spirits, spiritual degeneration, and moral reprobation.” (27).

While a number of Christian saints were disabled, including Margaret of Castello (1287-1320) and Teresa de Cartenga (born 1415-1420), the Reformation period offers a bleak picture of the church’s attitudes toward disability. Luther suggested a 12 year old mentally retarded boy be drowned because he was deemed demon possessed. When John Locke, Essays Concerning Human Understanding (1690) chose to define human beings on basis of rationality, he noted that those unable to think rationally were thus less than human. For Locke, this justified infanticide of the disabled.

Yong then summarises what he considers to be a theology of disability present in the church today.
1 – disabilities are ordained or permitted by God
2 – people who are disabled are encouraged to trust God
3 – church is to meet these people’s needs.
Yong is not convinced that such a theology is robust enough. He is on a mission, to redeem what he considers a poor and simplistic reading of the Bible, along with poorly applied theologies through history.

Until you read this chapter, what theological answers would you have given to the topic of human disability? Have you considered before the underlying messages given to the differently-abled by an intellectual and logical approach to Christianity?

amos yong’s theology and down syndrome chapter one

One of the upsides of blogging is I get sent lots of books to review. One of the downsides of blogging is that, since this is a hobby, I rarely get a chance to put together a complete book review. Which leaves me gazing guilty at an ever-growing pile of unread books.

So I’m taking inspiration from Scot McKnight, who rather than provide complete reviews, blogs books chapter by chapter. It feels more manageable, like one mouthful at a time, rather than a completely digested banquet. Let’s try and see. I’m starting with Amos Yong’s Theology and Down Syndrome: Reimagining Disability in Late Modernity. Not a book I was sent, but a book I picked up earlier this year, to help my ongoing processing and resourcing at a pastoral level, as I seem to find myself increasingly processing some mission questions raised by areas of disability. How to work alongside a medical system committed to abortion as their response to the diagnosis of Downs? How to help people who hear voices explore sensing God through through their ears? How does the church partner with those depressed by grief?

Chapter One – Introduction. Narrating and Imagining Down Syndrome and Disability.
Amos narrates his life experience, a rising academic star from a Pentecostal family, growing up with a brother with Down Syndrome. He explores the methodological issues and what it means to conduct God-talk in this diverse field. He is encouraged to proceed by the current growth of inter-disciplinary research, which might give his theological insights a voice. He explores the issue of who can speak for the disabled. How might the disabled have voice and can he, a trained theologian, speak on Mark (his brother’s) behalf? Yong hopes that this book contributes to advocacy, because “theologians are advocates of a peculiar sort: representing God to the world on the one hand, and the world to God on the other.” (10)

He draws on the Acts 2 narrative. If the gift of the Spirit (Acts 2:7) means people hear in their own langauge, then what does this mean for the differently abled? His starting point is that “the pneumatalogical imagination empowers Christian witness to establish a more peaceful and just society for all people, especially those with disabilities.” (14).

What are your experiences of God among the differently abled? Do you agree that Acts 2 does encourage the church to work with God’s Spirit so that all people can encounter God within their own timeframes?

how to look at a painting: book of the month

I am loving this book, How to look at a painting. New Zealand art curator, Justin Paton walks us through art over the ages. Each chapter pauses at an artpiece, inviting you to look at the luscious fruit of Italy’s Caravaggio, the lonely landscapes of New Zealand’s Rita Angus, the dazzling panoramas of America’s Lari Pittman and the mysterious “tombstones” of Japanese artist On Kawara.

It is a gorgeously written book, a real page turner, (truly a rare phrase to use for a book on art), written with wit and style, making it a deserving winner of the 2006 Montana New Zealand Book Award.

Justin makes art approachable, making me want to race into an art gallery. I also read this book as a worship practitioner. There is lots in here that sparks my creativity and makes me think about worship in new and fresh ways. I’m off to ponder worship as texture and worship as colour. But not until after I’ve visited my local art gallery.

kiwi sandwiched between richard hays and brian mclaren

My authors copy of Proclaiming the Scandal of the Cross arrived today.

It is such an important book; offering 18 sermons on preaching the atonement today, putting contemporary preached wheels to the multiple images of the atonement in the Bible. I have already used 3 sermons from it as case studies in my Living the Text class at Fuller Theological Seminary. There are sermons from CS Lewis, Rowan Williams (Archbishop of Canterbury) and me. A little Kiwi! Sandwiched between New Testament scholar Richard Hays and Brian McLaren.

My semon is titled “Participation and an Atomized World: A Reflection on Christ as Representative New Adam” and is part of a series of 10 sermons I preached around the communion table in 2004. The editor notes of my sermon; “Rather than discarding the biblical imagery and language, however, Taylor digs into the contemporary context and experience of New Zealanders … to breathe new life and meaning into biblical images. Therefore Taylor not only stands on firm biblical ground ..[but] … also in line with fine theological work done by one of the church’s early theologians.” (pages 103-4, 109.)

thread of grace: book of the month

Thread of grace is a superb novel. Set in Italy in WW2, and based on reality, it explores the hospitality extended by Italians to Jews fleeing the Nazi Holocaust. Russell moves effortlessly between Italian Catholics, Italian Jews and occupying Germans, to offer an absorbing and emotionally draining work of art.

Thread of Grace is the 3rd art of fiction from the imaginative pen of Mary Doria Russell. I first discovered The sparrow and then the sequel, Children of God. Both are works of sci-fi, that also explore themes of grace and redemption with the same absorbing emotional intensity.

Thread of Grace made me glad to be human. Russell is never a rose-tinted writer. She confronts the worst of humanity. Yet through characterisation, plot and tender attention to detail, she manages to weave a redemptive tapestry. For the spiritually alert, themes of hospitality toward the stranger, the extent of grace and the potential for human redemption, are worth discussing with friends long into the night.

For more of Steve’s book of the month recommendations, go here.

Do Christians know how to be Spiritual?

Things I liked about John Drane’s Do Christians Know How to be Spiritual?

1. John is such a down to earth and commonsense writer. Time and again this struck me.

4. The mapping of different types of contemporary spirituality on page 60 under 3 headings;
Lifestyle – Values, Community, Belonging, Morality
Discipline – Committment, Structure, Authority, Traditional faiths
Enthusiasm – Experimentation, Freedom, Experience, Mystery
and it left me wondering about where most of my spiritual exploration is (lifestyle I think); and where most church spiritual exploration is…

3. The diagram on page 85 exploring the interplay between undefined spiritual experience; gospel values and intentional Christian spirituality

4. Some great quotes

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, wth all you rmind, and with all your strength .. and Love your neighbour as you love yourself …can become an appropriate text not nly for mission among spiritual searchers but also for renewed forms of ministry within a post-modern church.” pages 88-89.

“Jesus never called disciples to be perfect or infallible, but to be true to themselves and to the gospel, and in the process of doing so to invite others to join them in the struggle to be human, spiritual, and Christian that is part of one’s life journey. Evangelism is more about inviting others to join us on the journey, because we share the same questions, than it is about selling people the ‘right’ answers to life’s problems,” Page 143.

“Angry and fragmented people create an angry and fragmented world, while those who are whole spread peace and harmony,” Pages 158.

“We have something to share with others not because we are different, but because we are no different, and we can become credible witnesses not as we condemn others and dismiss what we regard as their inadequate spiritualities, but as we constantly listen to the gospel and appropriate its challenge in our own lives.” Pages 160-1.

that moment you dread: updated

Last week I got that email I was dreading. “I was wondering if you had any copies of your PhD left that you got made into a smaller book size? If so could I purchase one of you?”

When I completed my PhD in 2004, I wondered if people would want copies, yet knew that it was cheaper to do a bulk run. So I offered a Graduation special, hoping that if their was sufficient interest, to do a bulk run and thus cut costs. I also took a bit of a punt and did a few extras, suspecting that requests might trickle in over the years.

They did. I sold my last extra a week ago. And then, you guessed it, I got that dreaded email, requesting a copy. So I am going to repeat the offer and see if I get enough requests to make it worth generating another run.

Update: Here’s one happy purchaser, who comments: “Go purchase its excellent and a valuable resource!”

Here’s the PhD details:

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