Scot McKnight: September 2005 Archives

Rick Brannon, a bibliophile, has blogged the first brief review of Jesus and His Death. I posted it at my Jesus and His Death blog, and point you there.

There is a reason, perhaps less in importance but perhaps just as insidious, why Christian communities of faith need to stop in their tracks and post a new life-sign about the end of racism in the Church. That reason is the growing, venomous, and potentially culture-crushing development in the USA of White Nationalism.

Perhaps you don't know about it, and I confess I didn't until I read Vanderbilt University's Law School professor, Carol M. Swain's book, The New White Nationalism in White America. Her piece of research that is also well-written (and these are rarely combined) investigates the growth of white hate groups in the USA. I admit, the book frightens me.

The Church can be an answer, a bold and beautiful answer to white nationalism because it can create an environment where Pentecost is practiced in such a way that an alternative society, one not known by racial difference but by common humanity and spirituality, can perform the gospel for all to see.

Here's the view of white nationalists: "Contemporary white nationalists draw upon the potent rhetoric of national self-determination and national self-assertion in an attempt to protect what they believe is their God-given natural right to their distinct cultural, political, and genetic identity as white Europeans" (16).

Three factors provoke white nationalists in the USA today: affirmative action (and Swain is about as level-headed as anyone I've read on this topic), immigration policies that are driving the inner city African-American community, especially males, into unemployment, crime rates -- and these are enveloped in the ideology of political correctness (which drives legitimate discussions underground). (I don't know much about the immigration problem, except that I know it is serious.)

White nationalists play the diversity card insidiously -- arguing that they are entitled to their ideology. Identity politics is the name of the game. Hate groups are all over the USA (she has a map of them on pp. 78-79).

There are parts of Swain's book that, because she trots out the real statistics, make me sick, but it is the sort of sickness you'd rather know about than be surprised by when it is too late. She has a fierce independence of mind, making her a perfect candidate for "purple politics," a politics that gets beyond classic cultural wars of our day. I find myself in disagreement at times, but her points are always well made.

"What we need to do," she says, "is to refashion a collective identity that can transcend race and therefore thwart our increasing drift toward tribalism" (252). What she is saying here is exactly what Jesus says in the Kingdom vision: Who are we? We are God's Kingdom people who are called to perform the gospel in our world for the good of others and the world. A clear calling for the Christian of the USA is a summons to create an alternative community with a collective identity where racism is is a category that once was.

Swain believes the gospel has the power to create that alternative society. Here these words: "Once a devotee to New Age religions, I have become a born-again Christian water-baptized by immersion in the name of Jesus Christ according to the dictates of Acts 2:38" (420-421). She's also seen it all, for she is an African American who, like the Delphic oracle, knows whereof she speaks.

Tomorrow I will detail her recommendations, which are numerous -- and numerous within what I would call a Kingdom vision of the gospel.

I have been asked to comment on the book with my name on it called The Story of the Christ.

The book was commissioned in England with T&T Clark/Continuum, and recently picked up by Baker Books in the USA. Hence, there are two publication dates. It is a short "introduction" to the life of Jesus, where about half the book is my "introduction" and the rest a continuous narrative of the Gospel texts.

Here's the tack I took: What would a 1st Century reporter have said about Jesus had that person encountered Jesus in (the) Galilee? So, it is a neutral introduction to the way Jesus strikes us if we really don't know much about him -- which struck me as both impossible (since I do know him) and challenging (since knowing him means we have angles on what he was like). In that introduction are some introductory issues -- like how did we get the Gospels, etc..

It was fun to write, and maybe will be of use to you.

I thought I'd post today on the need for repentance and forgiveness, but instead I want to posit another way of looking at our problem -- and it is a problem for whole Church. My contention is that the gospel comes to create the order designed by God -- a kingdom order, an ecclesial order, a practicing Pentecost order. The gospel is more than the resolution of judicial bankruptcy, though it is that. It is designed to restore Eikons to their former and intended glory so they will be in union with God and communion with others, for the good of others and the world.

Let's begin with Matthew 8:5-13:

Matt. 8:5 When he entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, appealing to him 6 and saying, “Lord, my servant is lying at home paralyzed, in terrible distress.” 7 And he said to him, “I will come and cure him.” 8 The centurion answered, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; but only speak the word, and my servant will be healed. 9 For I also am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my slave, ‘Do this,’ and the slave does it.” 10 When Jesus heard him, he was amazed and said to those who followed him, “Truly I tell you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith. 11 I tell you, many will come from east and west and will eat with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, 12 while the heirs of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” 13 And to the centurion Jesus said, “Go; let it be done for you according to your faith.” And the servant was healed in that hour.

How, I ask, would the following "hear" this text?
1. A charismatic.
2. A white suburban evangelical.
3. Jesse Jackson (he's easy to predict).

The answers, again dealing with stereotypical answers?
1. Charismatic: Jesus can do miracles even today.
2. White suburban evangelical: Salvation is by faith alone.
3. Jesse Jackson: Ethnic integration.

No one of us should dispute that each is justifiable, but what is the emphasis of the text and of Jesus' ministry? Jesse Jackson is closest to the intent of the text.

Now, the point we have to learn about is this: we need to learn how to read the text from a Kingdom perspective instead of just from our own perspective. (This, of course, challenges simplistic postmodernity, for pomo types might say it can mean whatever you want it to mean.) One of the nice points of Bob Robinson's recent posts is that pomo leads us to listen to the voice of the marginalized. We need to learn to be critical of our own readings, to see if our readings are culturally-enmeshed to the degree that we are simply passing off as gospel the powers that be rather than the Power who is to Be.

Now here's a suggestion. If you haven't read it or even heard of it, get yourself a copy of Brian K. Blount's Then the Whisper Put on Flesh, and read about how an African American context can shape what is seen in the ethics of the New Testament. You may not agree with everything he says, but I promise you'll see things you've not seen before. Brian teaches at Princeton, and I've never met him. I hope I do someday. We have e-mailed, and I told him how much I appreciated his book. My Jesus of Nazareth students read it last Spring, and we had a good discussion, which is a bit of an accomplishment for an 8am class.

He suggests that the whisper has put on "white flesh" (15) and that it deserves to put on a "flesh of color" (16).

Let me also posit another hermeneutical suggestion: Blount challenges the justification-as-judicial-redemption hermeneutic and summons us to a hermeneutic that is much more in line with Kingdom and therefore liberation (I've posted on Kingdom plenty, but my thread is Benedictus/Magnificat/Inaugural sermon/Beatitudes/Reply to John and the early chapters of Acts and Paul's analogy of the Church as a Body of unity). Blount is not far from this.

African Americans have learned to read the Bible, not so much through the lens of Paul, but through the lens of Moses and the Exodus and Jesus and the Kingdom.

How are we reading the Bible? Are we reading it through a single lens only? Do we know which lens we are using?

Fighting racism isn't a tack-on to what happens "after I believe," but an issue wrapped up in the gospel grace of God we embrace when we embrace Jesus Christ and his kingdom vision.

How often do we make distinctions between "faith in Christ" for redemption and "discipleship" for sanctification? or what we embrace for salvation and what we choose to do as a part of following Christ? As if the two are separable realms. This is hooey, I say.

In Embracing Grace I did something I've never written about before, but which came to me in my study for the book.

In what would be called in older categories the "decision" section, I suggest we embrace the gospel in three decreasing circles: first, we embrace the cosmic redemptive work of God (trinitarian work); second, we embrace the faith community wherein the performance of the gospel takes place; and third, but not until third, we personally embrace the gospel. In other words, a genuine embrace of the gospel is an embrace of what God is doing, what the Church is performing, and how we fit into that large, large, big, big work of God. Until we come to terms with this, we are simply embracing our own individual redemption -- which isn't the focus of God's work.

Now, if this order is correct -- and what I genuinely believe is that we are to do all three at the same time but that most times we don't talk about one and two until well after three, which creates rabid individualism -- if this is correct, then a commitment to end racism is part and parcel of what it means to embrace the gospel itself -- because it is the embrace of God's redemptive work.