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Review Summary: Timeless |
Date: 2008-11-10 |
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Details: I am amazed that this book is several decades old. It speaks to all believers today and reminds us of the kingdom that we are truly a part of. All the kingdoms of this world are faulty at the core, but this book reminds us that we are ambassadors of a different type of kingdom. Excellent read. I highly recommend it for everyone. |
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Review Summary: A Christian classic |
Date: 2008-11-06 |
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Details: I read this book with a group almost twenty years ago. Re-reading it now has shown me how much this book has influenced my faith and my view of the Church through much of my adult life. It's message still rings true. It's message still seeks a home in our churches, though. Most churches I am aware of, including my own, are the objects of their critique. Until we have 'being the Church' as our main focus, we will continue to fail at our mission. As long as we strive for niceness, effectiveness, growth, and cultural relevance we are self-distracted from being a peculiar community in the world, an embassy for the kingdom of God.
While they seem to have addressed the book to pastors and seminaries, all Christians will find this book both challenging and helpful as they follow Jesus. Oh that we could be known as followers of Jesus, as people who care for one another, and as a people who are aliens to the structures of the world around us. What wonders God would do if we would only have our first identity with him?
I'm glad I ordered this book. Re-reading it now has refreshed my thinking. It will also be a valuable resource as I lead classes in my congregation. |
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Review Summary: A Book to Be Pondered |
Date: 2008-10-18 |
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Details: This book will disturb you.
It will also enlighten you.
Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon's Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony (Abingdon Press, 1989) is one of the most engaging books I have read in recent years. Rarely do I come across a book that is so simultaneously upsetting and enjoyable.
There were moments in my reading when I disagreed vehemently. Other times, I could not help but nod my head at the brilliant insights into the nature of Christian faith.
Resident Aliens has the effect of an earthquake that shakes things up and then leaves you with a new landscape once the dust settles.
Christendom has fallen, say Hauerwas and Willimon, and the fall of Christendom is a good thing for true Christianity. In fact, the fall of Christendom has provided us with a unique opportunity to be the church by embodying a social alternative that "the world cannot on its own terms know" (18). Hauerwas and Willimon seek to dismantle the entire edifice of contemporary theology from the time of the Enlightenment. They believe that in large part, the church has been asking the wrong questions:
"The theological task is not merely the interpretative matter of translating Jesus into modern categories but rather to translate the world to him. The theologian's job is not to make the gospel credible to the modern world, but to make the world credible to the gospel." (24)
The authors take the reader through the Sermon on the Mount in order to transform our vision of the church's role in the world. Over and over again, Resident Aliens insists that the church's calling is not to make better the world as the world defines "betterment."
"What we call `church' is too often a gathering of strangers who see the church as yet another `helping institution' to gratify further their individual desires" (138).
Instead, Christians should be offering the world an entirely different perspective on everything from politics to finances, from sexuality to religiosity, from service to power.
Much of Hauerwas and Willimon's diagnosis of today's church seems quike bleak. But the brutal honesty is refreshing, and their emphasis on the peculiarity of the church desperately needs to be heeded.
At times, the book's vision of the Christian colony seems to overflow with fresh opportunities of discipleship. The bleakness of the current state of the church is coupled with a vibrant hope in the extension of the kingdom through small, unassuming disciples.
But often, the authors tend to put forth a rather Anabaptist, almost separatistic outlook. Their separatism is coupled with a strongly pacificistic orientation that may be troubling for some readers. The authors overstate their case at times, sometimes leading to false choices between "right living" versus "right thinking," or "church authority" versus "biblical authority."
But overall, Resident Aliens is one of the best books I've read this year. I highly recommend that you order it, ponder it, and discuss it with others. It is a thought-provoking book that has increased my passion for the local church and the extraordinary nature of living an "ordinary" Christian life. |
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Review Summary: It'll mess with your mind...in a good way |
Date: 2008-07-30 |
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Details: This is a book that I read when it first came out about 20 years ago. When I re-read it recently it had a very different impact on me, probably because of the experience of a quarter century of ordained ministry. I got much more out of the book the second time around.
The book is about the battle between culture and Church and the Church's role within, but not TO, the culture. While this book is a bit dated, I found it to be surprisingly fresh and timely and think it would be a great discussion book in Christian circles. Provocative to be sure, I was a bit offended at times, and yet found myself resonating with the offensive statement, when I allowed it to germinate a bit.
Here's an example of what I mean from page 42. "The Church is one political entity in our culture that is global, trans-national, trans-cultural. Tribalism is not the Church determined to serve God rather than Caesar. Tribalism is the United States of America, which sets up artificial boundaries and defends them with murderous intensity. And the tribalism of nations occurs most viciously in the absence of a Church able to say and to show, in its life together, that God, not nations, rules the world." OUCH!
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Review Summary: A Post-liberal primer on church and culture |
Date: 2008-02-26 |
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Details: A highly readable and important book on the way that Christians should interact with the surrounding culture. The post-liberal theology that drives the authors conclusions is interesting and relevant. This book gives a nice introduction to post-liberal thought without ever having to even mention the term. Having read it made reading Lindbeck's seminal work, the nature of doctrine, much easier. |
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out of 20 Reviews
