radical biblical and cultural interpretation and world-changing

8/8/2019 Radical Biblical and Cultural Interpretation and World-changing

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Brian GummMdiv student, Eastern Mennonite Seminary; MA student, Center for Justice & Peacebuilding

Eastern Mennonite University, Harrisonburg, Va.

Submitted to the Young Brethren Scholars Symposium

Bridgewater College, Bridgewater, Va.Friday, February 25, 2011

Just what, exactly, are we called to change?

On radical biblical and cultural hermeneutics and world-changing1

The Church in the United States finds itself in the midst of seismic shifts in society's thought

patterns and practices. These circumstances have created no small amount of teeth-gnashing and

clothes-rending. And while a critical awareness of these shifts is not likely in immediate view for most

American Christians, there does seem to be a widespread sense that, for better or worse, the world is

changing and we Christians must respond. And do we ever! Not long ago we saw again in various

media that we must put the Christ back in Christmas lest our Christian nation be lost for our

children and grandchildren. While back home in Iowa at my parents' for Christmas, I was flipping

through theDes Moines Registerand was astounded at the number of businesses who took out ad space

in order to remind us of the reason for the season. In one full-height tower ad for a sporting goods

chain, a picture of Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus is followed by a quote from Ronald Reagan which

is then followed up by the company logo and slogan. I was conflicted. Should I pray, say the pledge of

allegiance, or run out and buy some cross-country skis? The serious question is this: Was this ad

faithful Christian witness?

The approach taken above and others like it are underwritten by a certain popular but flawed

view of culture which offers a particular way of reading it. This reading then shapes quixotic

strategies for Christian engagement with the surrounding culture. But this view and the engagement it

produces can also affect our reading of the biblical text, thus having an impact on our faith. Therefore,

the focus of this paper will be biblical and cultural hermeneutics. By first taking a look at the ways in

which social life is imagined and therefore practiced, we will then move with Kavin Rowe into a

1 An earlier version of this paper was submitted for the class, Politics of Jesus Re-mixed with Mark Thiessen Nation,

professor of theology, Eastern Mennonite Seminary, December 14, 2010.


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Brian Gumm : Biblical & Cultural Hermeneutics and World-changing : Young Brethren Scholars Symposium 2

radical, theopolitical reading of the Acts of the Apostles.2 Our work with the ancient biblical text will

then shift to social critique in the work of James Davison Hunter.3 Based on our learning from Rowe

and Hunter, I will synthesize the material by lodging tentative challenges to my tradition, the Church of

the Brethren, before finally making my closing remarks. My sequencing of material and overall hope

for this paper is stated well by Rowe: to reread an ancient text with historical knowledge and

acumen...so that we might better understand how to think intelligently about the very real problems that

face us today.4

I. Imagining the possible

In the final chapter ofWorld Upside Down, Rowe provides an extended summary of the social

imaginary as articulated by Canadian political philosopher, Charles Taylor, a practicing Catholic.5 As

we will see in section two, Rowe's use of the social imaginary is profoundly helpful for seeing why his

reading of Acts is quite different than the norm. In addition to biblical hermeneutics, though, the social

imaginary is also instructive for cultural hermeneutics which we will see in section three with Hunter.

Far more than a disembodied social theory, Taylor's social imaginary shows the ways in which

people imagine their social existence, how theyfit togetherwith others, how thingsgo on between

them and their fellows, the expectations that are normally met, and the deeper normative notions and

images that underlie these expectations. Finally, the social imaginary is that common understanding

that makes possible common practices and a widelyshared sense of legitimacy.6 Rowe uses Taylor's

illustration fromA Secular Age, the act of organizing a demonstration such as a public protest, to show

2 C. Kavin Rowe. World Upside Down : Reading Acts in the Graeco-Roman Age. New York: Oxford University Press,2009.

3 James Davison Hunter. To Change the World : The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late ModernWorld. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

4 Rowe, World Upside Down, 7.5 Working from: Charles Taylor.A Secular Age. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007; and

Modern Social Imaginaries. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004.

6 Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries, quoted variously by Rowe, 142, emphasis mine.


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us a social imaginary at work. Organizing a public demonstration only makes sense within the act's

larger social world and its constituent historical narratives and norms, or as Rowe puts it, the range of

ideals signified by the word 'democracy.'7 Any social imaginary, including democracy, will have at its

core a moral and metaphysical order. To buttress against any secularist bifurcations of Religion and

Politicsper se, Rowe makes the bold claim that all political thinking is inescapably theological, and

any political discourse will eventually come down to what philosopher, Carl Schmitt, called the

metaphysical kernel of all politics.8 Therefore if social imaginaries collide, the consequences can be

significant. To interrupt or invalidate a larger social imaginary is to thereby challenge its very core.

Again from the public demonstration example, Rowe argues that replacing democracy with tyranny

devastates the context in which the practice of demonstration makes any sense. 9

So the social imaginary is the glue of communal consciousness that holds groups together and

makes shared life possible and coherent. It consists of shared expectations and notions, processes and

contracts, images and stories, all making shared life doable. Now ponder the social imaginary that

makes the sexuality discussion within the Church of the Brethren possible in the first place. Indeed, this

discussion is not strictly a Brethren matter; mainline denominations are all profoundly struggling with

it, itself a hint as to what makes the discussion possible and likely animates it. Now think of how

Brethren from Nigeria enter and engage the conversations on sexuality. While conservative American

and Nigerian Brethren will likely find common cause in this presenting issue, is it enough to expect

harmonious coexistence beyond that agreement? The cultural and theological questions hovering

around this conflict are far too complex to explore here, but it should be enough to say that our brief

look at the social imaginary casts doubt on mere agreement around particular contested issues being

7 Rowe, 144, emphasis mine.

8 Ibid., 169 where Schmitt is also quoted; Bill Cavanugh illustrates this wonderfully in The Myth of Religious Violence by

naming the so-called wars of religion in the 17th century the creation myth of the modern nation-state and a power grabat that: William T. Cavanaugh. The Myth of Religious Violence : Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict.

New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.

9 Ibid., 145.


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sufficient to sustaining life together in the Church. What is needed is a profoundly different way to

imagine the world and practice life together as the Church, and so we now turn to Kavin Rowe and the

book of Acts to see this radical vision at work.

II. Glimpsing a World Upside Down in the Acts of the Apostles

As Paul and his companions traveled around Asia Minor and Greece in the mid-firstcentury C.E., they came to the Greek port city of Thessalonica. As he often did, Paul

engaged in dialogue with fellow Jews at a local synagogue, arguing with Scripture and

testimony that the crucified and resurrected Jesus was the promised messiah of Israel,and that Gentiles were now welcome into this New Covenant. Some Jews and God-

fearing Greeks were convinced. Others, however, were not. Inciting a riot, the

malcontents rushed to the authorities to implicate Jason, the man hosting Paul and hiscompanions. Their cry: "These people who have been turning the world upside downhave now come here, and Jason has entertained them as guests! They are all acting

contrary to the decrees of the emperor, saying that there is another king named Jesus."10

Too often we read the Bible as personal, emotional therapy, failing to see much else, and so scratch our

heads when we come across passages such as these from Acts 17. Indeed, the academic study of the

Bible in the West has created theological justifications for individualistic readings, something John

Howard Yoder helped correct nearly 40 years ago with The Politics of Jesus,11 for which Karl Barth and

Dietrich Bonhoeffer helped set the stage. So in World Upside Down, Kavin Rowe is working against

nearly 300 years of biblical studies which typically characterize the book of Acts as originally being an

apologia from the early Christian church to the Roman empire, a sort of we come in peace letter.

Instead, Rowe is arguing that Acts was written by a Christian (Luke)forChristians and is shot through

with social and political implications for both Christians and the pagan empire that was variously

persecuting them. For as the previous illustration from Acts itself shows us, some people outside and

likely inside the early church were convinced that a harmonious existence (with) Rome12 was simply

not possible.

10 My own re-narration of Acts 17:1-7; turning the world upside down is found in the NRSV.

11 John Howard Yoder. The Politics of Jesus; Vicit Agnus Noster. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1972.

12 Rowe, 3.


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Before focusing on the content of Rowe's work in World Upside Down, a few formal notes.

Frankly, this book is not a straightforward read. The thrust of Rowe's argument is found in the middle

three of five chapters, but extended summaries of that argument are found in both the first and last

chapters. You can get much of what Rowe is arguing by focusing on the book's edges. Within the

middle three chapters, where Rowe does do a fine job substantiating his claims, there is a copious

amount of not only untranslated biblical Greek but also untransliteratedGreek, as well as extended,

untranslated quotes from German theologians and even a few phrases in Russian.

Next, Rowe's writing is thorough, by which I partially mean repetitive, and at times reads like

parallelisms in the Hebrew wisdom literature. Statements are often immediately restated using slightly

nuanced language. Taken altogether these factors contribute to World Upside Down being almost

unreadable to anyone without a seminary education, and perhaps even that would be a stretch. So if the

lessons from this book are to be taken to the broader Church outside the theological academy (and they

should be), someone must take his work up and adapt it. Formal critique aside, we will now turn to the

significant work Rowe has done in helping us read Acts, as the subtitle states, in the Graeco-Roman

age.

Christian mission as lived theopolitical tension in Acts

Seen as a rhetorically-charged work of political-theological narrative intended for early Christians,

Rowe argues for Luke as articulating the faith as "the construction of an alternative way of life...one

that runs counter to the life-patterns of the Graeco-Roman world." In other words, Christianity is a

"culture-forming narrative."13 So as we saw in the Acts 17 passage, there is a sense in which the

alternative culture of Christianity is indeed disruptive to surrounding cultures, even the empire, but just

not in the way that they may think. By tracing Paul's missionary journeys through Acts and noting the

13 Ibid., 4.


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unrest that literally followed him around, Rowe begins to focus on how that trouble finally catches up

to Paul in Jerusalem in Acts 21, where he is arrested and tried for sedition. By way of Luke's

considerable jurisprudential skill,14 a sequence of courtroom appearances follows, each working its

way up the rungs of judicial power. It eventually becomes apparent that no one can lodge a legal

complaint at the Christian mission and have it stick. Each officiating judge Gallio in ch. 18, Claudius

Lysias in ch. 21, Felix in ch. 23, and finally Festus and Herod Agrippa II in ch. 25 they simply see no

warrant to the charge of insurrection. The early church, as Rowe notes, was not out to establish

Christendom... New culture, yes coup, no.15Indeed, the king/basileus16 that Paul and his fellow

missionaries proclaimed exhibited radically different qualities of kingship, and whose kingdom is not

of this world.17

Rowe's exploration of the latter half of Acts, then, shows us a narrative tension between the

early Christian mission and the world(s) with which it was colliding. This tension is deeply theological

and political, ortheopolitical.18 Rowe argues this theopolitical tension is deliberate on Luke's part and

as Scripture it is not simply descriptive of the situation in Acts, butprescriptive for all who confess

Jesus as Lord/kurios and King/basileus and assemble themselves in his body, the Church. The Church,

then, must see itself as livingthis tension.19Rather than seeing itself having a particular mission to

cultureper se something we will explore below the Christian faith is itself a culture.

Before exploring Rowe's reflections on how Christians in Acts lived out this tension, it is

important to note what he sees as a significant theological-narrative move at the end of Acts. In chapter

28, Paul has finally made his way to Rome, awaiting his requested audience with Caesar in which he

14 Ibid., 5.

15 Ibid., 5.16 C.f. Acts 17:1-9, where the charge leveled against Christians uses king/basileus over the more common lord/kurios

or christ/christos. Rowe notes: "Luke understands well that (basileus/king) is the interpretation of (christos/christ) that

would best make sense to a Roman official," 100.

17 Jn 18:36, NIV.18 With thanks for at least the term going to William T. Cavanaugh. Theopolitical Imagination : Christian Practices of

Space and Time. London: T & T Clark, 2002.

19 Echoing Rowe: The tension we have been exploring is a livedtension..., 102.


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aims to finally clear the early Christian movement from charges of insurrection. But the curtain is

drawn on the Acts narrative before we ever see that play out and we are left with the tradition that Paul

was eventually executed in Rome, likely under Nero. Paul never gets to this trial as far as we know, and

his hopes of spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ to Spain20 are also left in question. For Rowe, this

move on Luke's part is deliberate, saying the literary dynamics of Acts actually encourage the

attentive reader to complete the story of Paul's trial... Paul will die in Rome as an innocent man. So

Jesus (in Jerusalem). So Paul (in Rome)."21

This move heightens the theopolitical tension described above. Yes, the Church seeks to inhabit

a kingdom not of this world that willhave destabilizing effects on the present fallen order of creation.

But the Church in its lived faith does not primarily seek to overthrow and replace empire.22 In this

regard, Christians are to be innocent/dikaios. Yet if Rowe is correct, here we see in Acts all indications

that Paul is killed anyway, innocent like the Lord who changed his life on the road to Damascus, earlier

in this same narrative. The implication that this should be a general expectation for most if not all

Christians was perhaps clearer to the original hearers of Acts in the late first century C.E., dealing as

they were with waves of persecution from Roman officials both high and low across the empire. 23If we

follow Rowe in this theopolitical reading of Acts, however, we must see this potential in the present,

especially if we consider the imitative/mimetic themes that crop up here and there in the New

Testament, from both Paul and Jesus. For instance, Paul tells the congregation in Corinth, Be imitators

of me, as I am of Christ,24 and Jesus instructed would-be disciples of their need to deny themselves

20 C.f. Rom 15.

21 Rowe, 89.22 On thisyes/no oryes/buttension, Rowe states that it is in literary terms the dialectic as one narrative whole, p. 140,

which we are to inhabit as Christians, c.f. FN 18.

23 Against any normative, empire-wide views of Roman attitudes and tactics vis-a-vis Christians in the first century C.E.,

Rowe notes that civic 'freedom' under the empire was a rather tenuous matter, and, in practice, Roman governors couldmore or less do what was needed to maintain the health of the empire, 94. More on the challenges of reading the

historical account along with Scripture are explored on p. 108.

24 1 Cor 11, NRSV.


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they embody but also at that of the moral or metaphysical order. Indeed the former collision is but the

necessary and derivative outworkingof the latter."29 So declaring Jesus as lord of all, spreading the

gospel, and assembling the faithful in the church/ekklesia all directly challenge the very core of what

makes life in human civilizations comprehensible and practical, whether in the Roman empire as we

find it in Acts or in our world today. Indeed, the biblical critique of pagan idolatry that permeates the

entire corpus of Scripture e.g. I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the

land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.30 these can be seen as a warning against

engaging uncritically with social imaginaries that covet our allegiance, whether Egyptian, Canannite,

Graeco-Roman, or American. But to protect against any categorically world-negative or other-worldly

readings, Rowe warns that it would be a bizarre reading indeed that could not detect Luke's

indebtedness to Roman jurisprudence, his appreciation for pagan poetry and philosophical ideals of

fraternity and friendship, his note on Paul's powerful friends...and his recurring praise even of certain

centurions.31

So what we are left with in Rowe's World Upside Down is a dramatically different way of not

only reading Acts but also reading the signs of the our times and therefore crafting and practicing

(hopefully) more faithful engagement in the world. Where Rowe offers helpful glimpses at reading the

text of our present circumstances, James Davison Hunter takes us further, focusing a social critique

on contemporary American Christianity. It is to his project we now turn.

III. The Challenges to Faithfulness in a World Upside Down

In describing the cultural circumstances for Christians in America, James Davison Hunter offers us a

bridge from our engagement with Rowe and Acts, and he does so with reference to Taylor's social

29 Ibid., 145, emphasis mine.30 Ex 20:2, NIV, the first word that God desired Israel to hear in the decalogue is both salvation couched in narrative and

warning.

31 Rowe, 171.


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imaginary. Hunter asserts that politics has become a 'social imaginary' that defines the horizon of

understanding and the parameters for action and is the way in which social life and its problems are

imagined and it provides the framework for how Christians envision solutions to those problems.32

Recall our opening illustration of the newspaper advertisement with the manger scene followed by a

quote from Ronald Reagan. This problem statement drives all of what Hunter sets out to do in To

Change The World, and if we factor in what has just been discussed in relation to Acts we can begin to

see that the Church in America has a serious crisis of faith on its hands.

Hunter organizes his work into three parts which he calls essays with a series of chapters

within each. The first essay engages in a thorough discussion of the prevailing understanding of

culture, how that view sets Christian engagement with the world off on a certain trajectory, and

ultimately how that view (therefore engagement) is simply wrong-headed at best and unfaithful and

corrupting at worst. In the first essay he also offers his own propositions for an alternative view of

culture which sets some of the groundwork for his constructive argument in essay three. Essay two

shifts the focus to Hunter's critique of what he sees as the three dominant modes of Christian cultural

engagement in America: the Christian Right, the Christian Left, and neo-Anabaptists. Rooted as I am in

a tradition which claims historical Anabaptist roots, the Church of the Brethren,33 and studying in a

Mennonite institution heavily influenced by the neo-Anabaptist scholars with which Hunter is

engaging, namely John Howard Yoder and Stanley Hauerwas, it should be no surprise that a good

portion of my reflections in this section will focus on that third group in Hunter's list. It is worth noting,

however, that internal to both current Brethren and Mennonite groups there are varying degrees of all

three modes of engagement that Hunter lists.34

32 Hunter, To Change the World, 168.

33 Those Brethren with any historical-theological awareness will be quick to point out the dimension of classical GermanPietism along with Anabaptism in the formation of the Schwarzenau Brethren in early eighteenth century Germany.

34 Hunter himself acknowledges this in footnotes, referencing Carl Bowman'sBrethren Society : The CulturalTransformation of A "Peculiar People". Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995.


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Finally, essay three contains Hunter's constructive argument which he terms faithful presence.

Along with that argument, though, there is more critique going on. Hunter names many of the unique

challenges to Christian faithfulness in this age and again brings in the three groups to see how each are

(or rather are not) addressing these challenges. In sum it seems fair to say that Hunter's To Change the

Worldis well over two-thirds critique and/or description. While as James K.A. Smith notes in his

review of the book, Hunter is a sociologist without the usual allergy to normative language,35even

still, Hunter's argument for faithful presence is explicitly framed as preliminary and needing further

work by formal theologians. Time will tell if this challenge is taken up, though judging from Hunter's

influence in the academy it likely will be. Now we will turn to a more substantive engagement with

Hunter's work.

Adventures in missing the point36

Consider first the following quote: "I love this country so much that I do not want to see it fall from its

pinnacle of well-being into a state of disarray which it surely will, unless it changes its ways. That's

why I choose to critique America from what I believe to be a biblical perspective."37 Without

foreknowledge of the person who wrote that, or in what section it was quoted by Hunter, it might be

hard to discern their particular American political views and/or affiliations. I had the benefit of both yet

was still surprised to see they were written by Tony Campolo, a progressive Evangelical. But that is

largely the point of Hunter's entire first essay: Despite differences in stated issues of concern, the

underlying social imaginary of liberal and conservative Christians is the same. It is distinctly American

and especially political.

35 James K.A. Smith. "How (Not) to Change the World." The Other Journal at Mars Hill Graduate School.

http://theotherjournal.com/article.php?id=1021 (accessed December 12, 2010).

36 With apologies to Brian D. McLaren and Tony Campolo.Adventures in Missing the Point : How the Culture-Controlled

Church Neutered the Gospel. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2003.Based on Hunter's insights in the subsequent

discussion, the irony of their choice of title (and subtitle) should become apparent.

37 Tony Campolo quoted by Hunter, 139.


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reality.42 Material existence takes a subservient role to this ideal. This view of the ideal has a

concomitant individualism, the view that the autonomous and rational individual is the key actor in

social change.43 A notable problem with this view is that it is largely ahistorical and abstract,

(imputing) a logic and rationality to culture where such linearity and reasonableness does not exist.44

Contra this prevailing view and its philosophical underpinnings, Hunter offers a list of eleven

propositions, seven related to culture and four related to cultural change. The list is enough of a direct

challenge to prevailing views as to make it worth outlining here:45

On culture

1) Culture is a system of truth claims and moral obligations

2) Culture is a product of history

3) Culture is intrinsically dialectical4) Culture is a resource and, as such, a form of power

5) Cultural production and symbolic capital are stratified in a fairly rigid structure of "center"

and "periphery"6) Culture is generated within networks

7) Culture is neither autonomous nor fully coherent

On cultural change

1) Cultures change from the top down, rarely if ever from the bottom up

2) Change is typically initiated by elites who are outside of the centermost positions of prestige3) World-changing is most concentrated when the networks of elites and the institutions they

lead overlap

4) Cultures change, but rarely if ever without a fight

Next, Hunter draws out some history and characteristics of the turn to politics in American

culture. Starting roughly around the time of the New Deal, Hunter asserts that the American social

imaginary has developed such that (the state's) laws, policies, and procedures have become the

dominant framework by which we understand collective life, its members, its leading organizations, its

problems, and its issues.46 The public becomes conflated with the political and so in the search for

solutions, we put impossibly high expectations to politics and the political process.47 With the

42 Ibid., 24.

43 Ibid., 26.

44 Ibid., 26.45 This list is culled from section headings, each containing some degree of explication, Hunter, 32-44.

46 Hunter, 103.

47 Ibid., 106.


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dissolution of solidarity in the broader culture leading to bipartisan politicization, ideological

polarization48rushes in to provide content. Such polarization is marked by ressentiment, consisting of

resentment over a perceived harm, but also anger, envy, hate, rage, and revenge as the motive of

political action and is essentially a discourse of negation.49Hunter does not name this specifically

but I could not help but thinking of the Tea Party movement of the past few years and the tone and

content of their rhetoric, which is typically angry and often conflates Christianity with American

national identity.

To supplement our engagement with Hunter let us briefly turn to other critiques of what James

K.A. Smith coyly terms the Constantinianism of the Left.50 Smith teaches philosophy at Calvin

College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and reports in his essay having the night before attended a book-

signing event for Jim Wallis' then-recently-released God's Politics.51 With reverse echoes of Hunter,

Smith expresses disappointment when he says that (w)hile (Wallace is) not out to establish a theocracy

governed by a leftish god, his position is nevertheless deeply 'statist.'52Also, the tendency of the

Christian Left to invoke the biblical prophets when speaking to social injustices has led both Hunter

and Douglas Harink to note the radically different cultural contexts the prophets were speaking into

from our own American life. As Harink says after having noted his Canadian perspective on the U.S.

conversation, (t)he assembly of the people of God whom Wallis addresses (in God's Politics), and

whom he assumes the prophets and Jesus would be addressing, is America, a society and a nation of

'endangered' souls.53Hunter agrees, stating that (t)he only way that Wallis and others can make these

48 Ibid., 103.49 Ibid., 107 & 108.

50 James K.A. Smith. The Devil Reads Derrida: And Other Essays on the University, the Church, Politics, and the Arts.

Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2009.51 Jim Wallis. God's Politics : Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It. New York: HarperCollins, 2006.

52 Smith, The Devil Reads Derrida, 105.

53 Douglas Harink. "Response to Jim Wallis, Gods Politics: A New Vision for Faith and Politics in America." InAmerican

Academy of Religion, Theology and Religious Reflection Section. Washington DC, 2006; also published as God'spolitics? A response to Jim Wallis (Part One). Faith and Theology. http://faith-theology.blogspot.com/2008/07/gods-

politics-response-to-jim-wallis.html (accessed December 13, 2010); with a follow-up post God's politics? A response to

Jim Wallis (Part Two). Faith and Theology. http://faith-theology.blogspot.com/2008/07/gods-politics-response-to-jim-


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strong statements is to confuse America with Israel and the political dynamics of modern American

democracy with the divine laws mandated for ancient Israel.54 So we see that the conflation of the

modern nation-state with the ekklesia is one of the most telling examples of the social imaginary in

which both the Christian Left andRight lodge their projects of world-changing, often via the

machinery of American politics.

At the risk of sounding like I am picking too much on the Christian Left, let me be clear: The

Christian Left is ideologically affiliated with the national-political perspective to which I am most

sympathetic.55 Picking on the Christian Right is too easy for me because I have little invested in those

circles and easily see where Hunter's critique of is spot-on. Therefore it seems more responsible to

address the political log in my own eye. Smith shares this sentiment, adding, there seems to be no

shortage of Christian scholars, pundits, and armchair cultural critics pointing out the inadequacies,

inconsistencies, and injustices of the Religious Right. Why repeat it here?56 With that proviso out of

the way, let us continue to a discussion on Hunter's critique of neo-Anabaptists.

Parsing the language of politics with neo-Anabaptists

Out of the three groups that Hunter critiques, he seems to have the most sympathy for, and in some

ways seems indebted to, neo-Anabaptists. His critique of neo-Anabaptists is strikingly different from

his work with the other two groups, whom we have seen are cut from the same cultural cloth. Not so

with neo-Anabaptists. First, though, a quick note on the term neo-Anabaptist. By this Hunter is

referring not only to historical Anabaptist groups such as Amish, Brethren, Hutterites, and Mennonites

but also the more recent scholarly work generated by Stanley Hauerwas, with whom Hunter engages

most in his critique. Interestingly, Hunter also characterizes as neo-Anabaptist both Radical Orthodoxy

wallis_30.html (accessed December 13, 2010).54 Hunter, 147.

55 Note the modifier most. My inner Anabaptist has me in permanent suspicion of national politics.

56 Smith, The Devil Reads Derrida, 106.


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and the New Monastic movement, with folks like Shane Claiborne. James K.A. Smith has contributed

to the literature of the former57and calls that classification debatable but defensible.58

While noting some strong resonance with the Christian Left, especially around social justice

concerns, what sets neo-Anabaptists apart most for Hunter is our59strong Church/World distinction,

especially as it relates to attitudes toward the State. Neo-Anabaptist expression seeks to keep its

distance from the State, maintaining a basic distrust toward its structure, action, and use of power.60

The animating myth for Anabaptists both traditional and neo is the commitment to reclaim the ideal of

true and authentic New Testament Christianity and the primitive church of the apostolic age.61 This

commitment is joined to a suspicion of the State largely rooted in the collective memory of early

persecution and the perceived tragic error of Constantinianism both past and present. For Hunter, it is

this strong Church/World distinction and a deep suspicion of the State and the Market, often couched in

biblical principalities and powers language, that drives a separatist impulse62 which he sees as too

world-negative and inadequate to speak into the vocations of ordinary Christians in the workaday

world.63

It is in Hunter's exploration of contemporary forms of Constantinianism, especially in his

quoting neo-Anabaptist scholars about global capitalism, that something interesting begins to happen:

his critique starts to sound more like affirmation. Indeed, based on later descriptive work it becomes

clear that much of what makes neo-Anabaptists nervous about the State and Market also gives Hunter

pause. Ultimately it seems like Hunter's critique comes down to semantics. It is worth quoting him at

57 James K.A. Smith.Introducing Radical Orthodoxy: Mapping a Post-secular Theology. Grand Rapids, Mich.: BakerAcademic, 2004; the characterization is debatable perhaps by virtue of the recent book by edited by Chris K. Huebner

and Tripp York: The Gift of Difference: Radical Orthodoxy, Radical Reformation. Winnipeg, Manitoba: Canadian

Mennonite University Press, 2010.58 Smith, How (Not) to Change the World.

59 Again, my rootedness in the Anabaptist tradition and influence by Yoder and Hauerwas compels me to speak in a

possessive sense.

60 Hunter, 151.61 Ibid., 151.

62 Ibid., 162.

63 Ibid., 223.


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through the twentieth century. There are far more treasures to be found in Hunter's To Change the

World, in both his critique and the argument for faithful presence, but we will now turn to focus on

more of an in-house discussion.

IV. Toward Integration: Reckoning with my Brethren

Having once been a peculiar and plain people, the Church of the Brethren now looks and acts much

like the rest of American Mainline Protestantism. We share its crises and in many ways reflect

American cultural views and practices. Elders have disappeared from congregational life, their

responsibilities dispersed both down and up the chain, including to various Executives. Lay ministers

have been replaced by seminary-educated, professional clergy, a class once derisively labeled as

hireling preachers by nineteen century Brethren Elder, Peter Nead.68 Organizationally, Carl Bowman

notes the transforming influence of Brethren mission work in the late nineteenth century as driving a

growing desire to be seen as respectable by other Christian denominations and service organizations.69

The traditional Brethren desire for unity, once located within the fellowship of Brethren, and largely

focused on visible particulars in the nineteenth century, began to turn outward into trans-

denominational ecumenical ventures, rending the fabric of traditional Brethren doctrine and polity to

the point that, as Bowman concludes, (b)eing Brethren thus lost its reference to the quality of faith and

practice...and was reduced to a mark of organizational affiliation.70

The force of Bowman's statement coupled with his recent survey-based research inPortrait of a

People71 should be held up in light of what we have examined here in Taylor's social imaginary

framework as well as with Hunter's charge of power naivete on the part of Anabaptists. For the relative

68 Peter Nead. Theological Writings on Various Subjects, or, a Vindication of Primitive Christianity as Recorded in theWord of God : In Three Parts. Youngstown, Ohio: Dunker Springhaus Ministries, 1997; Nead is being quoted without

citation in the introduction by William Kostlevy, vi.69 Bowman,Brethren Society, 153.

70 Ibid., 289; emphasis is the author's.

71 Carl Desportes Bowman.Portrait of a People : The Church of the Brethren at 300. Elgin, Ill.: Brethren Press, 2008.


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minority of Brethren who find refuge in liberal social justice circles of the Christian Left, being

Brethren can mean just that. On the other hand, for the majority of Brethren who reflect the Christian

Right, who favor the so-called War on Terror, and would likely send themselves or their children into

national military service,72they have a home too. But are either of these things the Church: social

activism or nationalistic militarism? Is having consumer-like choices in these matters necessarily a

good thing? Does not this lopsided dichotomy within the Church of the Brethren reflect the ideological

polarization which Hunter describes and whose social imaginary isAmerican to the core? Whither

Anabaptism, traditional or otherwise, within Brethren today?73Did an ignorant view of institutional

power and a desire for respectability lull us into uncritical embrace of professionalism, individualism,

the technological society, and all the other trappings of the Enlightenment project?

These questions take us too far afield for this paper but they are pressing concerns of mine, a

Brethren minister sojourning in a Mennonite institution of higher education and deeply indebted to neo-

Anabaptists such as Yoder and Hauerwas, but also to those outside that tradition whom we have

encountered here, namely Hunter, Smith, and Taylor. In-house crises considered, Brethren would do

well to take up the evaluative frameworks these three provide. As a tradition that highly values the New

Testament, we should especially look back to Acts with Rowe for a theopolitical biblical vision for how

life as Church may be imagined and lived out in contrast but faithfully witnessing to the powers that be.

Conclusion

In this paper we have seen how a theopolitical reading of the book of Acts with Kavin Rowe offers us a

vision for the Christian faith, mission, and assembly which strongly challenges our modern secularizing

impulses. Through engagement with Charles Taylor's social imaginary we have seen how to not only

read the books of Acts in the Graeco-Roman age but along with Hunter we have hopefully learned to

72 Based on the hypothetical draft question in Bowman's survey, reported in fig. 7.3 inPortrait of a People, 69.

73 Recent interest in Stuart Murray's new book amongst some Brethren has given me hope in this regard. The NakedAnabaptist : The Bare Essentials of a Radical Faith. Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 2010.


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better read the text of our own present realities and understand how acculturated to the American

project Christians have become. Finally, based on all the material, I have lodged a number of tentative

challenges against my own tradition, the Church of the Brethren.

The early twenty-first century is an age that is irrevocably dependent on digital, networked

technology, and we are awash in media and gadgets with which to deliver it all, assuming that one can

clear the economic barriers to entry. Through the forces of globalization and digitization, the world is

becoming smaller and more connected, while simultaneously becoming more remote and insulated.

The challenges of cultural and religious pluralism press in upon us. These phenomena Hunter refers to

as the challenges of Difference and Dissolution, the weakening of plausibility structures74 that

have held the social imaginary forAmerican Christianity together since the birth of our nation. We now

see these structures shaking, shining light on their temporality and ultimate inadequacy for the

Christian life together as the Church.

This is no time for the Church to engage in desperate grasps for power to maintain the status

quo, just as it is no time for the old Anabaptist separatist impulse. For indeed, as we see with some

Amish groups now working in factories, to where would we withdraw? This is also not a time for the

Church to perpetuate institutional secularity between the academy and the congregation, the clergy and

the laity. This is a time for the Church to come together as a culture and a community, living faithfully

within the dialectic tension Rowe describes when social imaginaries collide. Hunter names this tension

in his constructive argument as the Church's affirmation and antithesis to/of the world.75 We

constitute the Christian culture through symbolic/liturgical and concrete/missional witness to the truth

we seek to embody in discipleship to Jesus Christ, the redemption of all creation by that God we have

known asAbba, Son, and Sancte Spiritus. By that God, may our vision be clear enough to proceed

faithfully.

74 Hunter, 219.

75 Ibid., 231.


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Harink, Douglas. "Response to Jim Wallis, Gods Politics: A New Vision for Faith and Politics in America." InAmerican

Academy of Religion, Theology and Religious Reflection Section. Washington DC, Nov. 2006; also published online asGod's politics? A response to Jim Wallis (Part One). Faith and Theology. http://faith-theology.blogspot.com/2008/07/gods-politics-response-to-jim-wallis.html (accessed December 13, 2010); with a follow-

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Nead, Peter. Theological Writings on Various Subjects, or, a Vindication of Primitive Christianity as Recorded in the Wordof God : In Three Parts. Youngstown, Ohio: Dunker Springhaus Ministries, 1997.

Rowe, C. Kavin. World Upside Down : Reading Acts in the Graeco-Roman Age. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.Smith, James K.A. "How (Not) to Change the World." The Other Journal at Mars Hill Graduate School.

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___. The Devil Reads Derrida: And Other Essays on the University, the Church, Politics, and the Arts. Grand Rapids,

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BibliographyBoyd, Gregory A. The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power Is Destroying the Church. Grand

Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2006

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