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| Len Member Joined Nov 7, 2007 255 posts Location: Kelowna, BC |
 Resident Aliens |
Posted Dec 29, 2009; 1:46 pm |
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| I am finally reading this landmark title. I'm blogging my way thru it, but would be fun to open some conversation so I'll echo the posts here.. |
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| Len Member Joined Nov 7, 2007 255 posts Location: Kelowna, BC |
| One |
Posted Dec 29, 2009; 1:48 pm |
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It seems that every year or so I find myself forced to read backwards.
Some books open new territory, or open old territory in fresh ways, and they become seminal.. they become the fertile soil for reflection and renewed praxis, and they form part of a backdrop of consciousness that anchors further work. If you are in a particular conversation for long enough, eventually you get a sense of the larger map. And sometimes a hole takes shape.. and you realize that there is a reference point in the conversation that everyone knows.. except you. So, you dig around a bit and discover that THIS book or THAT writer said something ten or twenty.. or two hundred .. years ago. And maybe you decide to look them up.
I did that last year with Alisdair MacIntyre and Jurgen Moltmann. The year before it was Richard Quebedeaux. This year it was Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon and their book, “Resident Aliens.” A Google search this morning turned up a website.. resident-aliens.org. The blurb reads like this:
| Quote: | | The Apostle Peter addresses his first letter “to those who reside as aliens.” This is an apt description for the sojourning Christian who’s not truly at home in this world. I’m one of those people, a member of that colony by the grace of God, and these are my reflections as I too cry: “How shall we sing the LORD’s song in a foreign land?” (Psalm 137:4) |
This awareness has a prophetic ring. And whether you are in neo-Anabaptist circles or not, there is a growing awareness of the importance of this perspective. We have so compromised our faith for so long that it is only with the collapse of Christendom that we are recognizing the fall. The recovery of memory.. the knowledge of ourselves as a covenant people on a journey and not merely chaplains for culture. seems to be everywhere, if more obvious in the neo-monastics.
So far, I haven’t been disappointed in the read. I cracked the book two nights ago. It is around 175 pages. The preface itself is a helpful frame.
Philippians 3:20, Moffat.. vividly translates politeuma as ‘We are a colony of heaven..’ A colony is a beachhead, an outpost, an island of one culture in the midst of another, a place where the values of home are reiterated and passed on to the young, a place where the distinctive life-style of the resident aliens are lovingly nurtured and reinforced.
Last edited by Len on Dec 29, 2009; 1:54 pm; edited 1 time in total. |
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| Len Member Joined Nov 7, 2007 255 posts Location: Kelowna, BC |
| Two |
Posted Dec 29, 2009; 1:49 pm |
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In the second chapter of Resident Aliens Hauerwas and Willimon take on Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture. They write that, “We have come to believe that few books have been a greater hindrance to an accurate assessment of our situation than Christ and Culture. Niebuhr rightly saw that our politics determines our theology. He was right that Christians cannot reject “culture.” But his call to Christians to accept “culture” .. had the effect of endorsing a Constantinian social strategy. “Culture” became a blanket term to underwrite Christian involvement with the world without providing any discriminating modes for [discernment].”
In saying “the church doesn’t have a social strategy, the church IS a social strategy,” we are attempting to indicate an alternative way of looking at the political, social significance of the church.”
More helpful than Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture is John Howard Yoder in “A People in the World: Theological Interpretation.” Yoder distinguishes between the activist church, the conversionist church, and the confessing church.
The activist church is more concerned with the building of a better society than with the reformation of the church. Through the humanization of social structures, the activist church glorifies God…
The conversionist church argues that no amount of tinkering with the structures of society will counter the effects of human sin… the sphere of political action is shifted from without to within, from society to the human soul..
The confessing church is not a synthesis of the two approaches, but a radical alternative.
| Quote: | “Rejecting both the individualism of the conversionists and the secularism of the activists and their common equation of what works with what is faithful, the confessing church finds it main political task to lie, not in the personal transformation of individual hearts or the modification of society, but rather in the congregation’s determination to worship Christ in all things.. We might be tempted to say that faithfulness rather than effectiveness is the goal of a confessing church. Yet we believe this is a false [dichotomy].. (45)
“The confessing church, like the conversionist church, also calls people to conversion, but it depicts that conversion as a long process of being baptismally engrafted into a new people, an alternative polis, a countercultural social structure called church. It seeks to influence the world by being the church, that is, by being something the world is not and can never be.. The confessing church seeks the visible church, a place, clearly visible to the world, in which people are faithful to their promises, love their enemies, tell the truth, honor the poor, suffer for righteousness, and thereby testify to the amazing community-creating power of God…
“This church can participate in secular movements against war, against hunger, and against other forms of inhumanity, but it sees this as part of its necessary proclamatory action. This church knows that its most credible form of witness (and the most “effective” thing it can do for the world) is the actual creation of a living, breathing, visible community of faith.” (47) |
This emphasis on a visible, concrete, alternative.. visible in a people and a place.. connects well with the recovery of a theology of place. There are many great sources and conversations for that recovery, the roots of the loss of which are found in dualism and the tendency to abstraction and "objectification." (Though it's fascinating to reflect that the Eastern church and the sacramental traditions never experienced this loss in the same way as the Western church and non-sacramental traditions).
“Everything that the Creator God does in forming us humans is done in place. It follows from this that since we are his creatures and can hardly escape the conditions of our making, for us everything that has to do with God is also in place. All living is local: this land, this neighborhood, these trees and streets and houses, this work, these people.” Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, Peterson |
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| Sudsy Member Joined Sep 23, 2003 2833 posts |
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Posted Dec 29, 2009; 2:40 pm |
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| Quote: | “The confessing church, like the conversionist church, also calls people to conversion, but it depicts that conversion as a long process of being baptismally engrafted into a new people, an alternative polis, a countercultural social structure called church. It seeks to influence the world by being the church, that is, by being something the world is not and can never be.. The confessing church seeks the visible church, a place, clearly visible to the world, in which people are faithful to their promises, love their enemies, tell the truth, honor the poor, suffer for righteousness, and thereby testify to the amazing community-creating power of God…
“This church can participate in secular movements against war, against hunger, and against other forms of inhumanity, but it sees this as part of its necessary proclamatory action. This church knows that its most credible form of witness (and the most “effective” thing it can do for the world) is the actual creation of a living, breathing, visible community of faith.” |
I agree with this description although what it calls 'conversion', sounds more to me to be 'sanctification'. Conversion, in my thinking, is the change in one's heart to a new disposition toward God after embracing the Gospel. We become a 'convert' by accepting the Gospel message as truth by faith. I like the thought that this church seeks to be the visible church and this means being something the world is not and cannot become without Christ. So, how does this work with being 'seeker sensitive' ? I agree with the term but it seems to compromise distinctiveness between Christianity and the world (unbelievers).
IMO, we have reduced our influence by not seeing ourselves as aliens / strangers in a foreign land / ambassadors of the Kingdom. We 'fit in' too well to be noticed. |
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| Len Member Joined Nov 7, 2007 255 posts Location: Kelowna, BC |
| conversion |
Posted Dec 30, 2009; 4:59 pm |
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| The difference would be whether you see conversion as a point action or as a process. Used to be we would talk about "justification" (point action) and "sanctification" (process). But in the early church conversion was dominantly seen as a process.. this according to recent scholarship (Gordon Smith). In the ancient world people were invited to "belong" before they were expected to "believe." |
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| Sudsy Member Joined Sep 23, 2003 2833 posts |
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Posted Dec 30, 2009; 5:40 pm |
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| Quote: | | But in the early church conversion was dominantly seen as a process.. this according to recent scholarship (Gordon Smith). In the ancient world people were invited to "belong" before they were expected to "believe." |
Is there some scriptural support and/or early historical proof of this ? I think it would be great that our Kingdom way of life would be so intriguing and inviting that people would desire to belong and would pursue how one joins in. This to me is what 'seeker sensitive' should be about. Being patient with those who desire to belong and allowing them to ask questions and assist them to come to belief. |
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| Len Member Joined Nov 7, 2007 255 posts Location: Kelowna, BC |
| early Christian initiation |
Posted Dec 30, 2009; 6:12 pm |
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You could purchase Smiths book "Transforming Conversion" and review it for us..
Unless someone has a copy of Robert Banks book on the early church.. "Pauls Idea of Community" (can't locate my aged copy)
then maybe we could get some solid documentary evidence..
I think this shift in our cultural ethos is a happy thing. It requires us to live what we believe.. to "be" an apologetic and not just to "have" one.. |
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