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A Peculiar People: The Church As Culture in a Post-Christian Society
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Average Rating:  out of 8 Reviews
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Price: $17.00
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Sale: $7.30
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Manufacturer: InterVarsity Press
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EAN (European Article Number): 9780830819904
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Number of Items: 1
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Binding: Paperback
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Author: Rodney Clapp
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Publisher: InterVarsity Press
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Dewey Decimal Number: 262
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Publication Date: 1996-11
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Reading Level: 251
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Description: Voted one of Christianity Today's 1997 Books of the Year!Christians feel increasingly useless, argues Rodney Clapp, not because we have nothing to offer a post-Christian society, but because we are trying to serve as "sponsoring chaplains" to a civilization that no longer sees Christianity as necessary to its existence. In our individualistic, technologically oriented, consumer-based culture, Christianity has become largely irrelevant.The solution is not to sentimentally capitulate to the way things are. Nor is it to retrench in an effort to regain power and influence as the sponsor of Western civilization. What is needed is for Christians to reclaim our heritage as a peculiar people, as unapologetic followers of the Way. Within the larger pluralistic world, we need to become a sanctified, subversive culture that develops Christian community as a truly alternative way of life. Christians must learn to live the story and not just to restate it.Writing inclusively with considerable verve, Clapp offers a keen analysis of the church and its ministry as we face a new millennium.
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Customer Reviews
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Review Summary: This book will push you to think outside the box |
Date: 2001-03-26 |
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Details: Rodney Clapp's book totally transformed my view of the nature and purpose of the church. Instead of viewing the church as a collection of individuals with a particular philosophy, ideology, or political agenda; Clapp identifies the church as a community that composes a new culture. This culture, he says, should be in the business of transforming society and individuals through what he calls "sanctified subversion". That is, instead of withdrawing from the mainstream culture into our own Christian ghetto (the all too prevalent fortress mentality found among most politically and theologically conservative Christians), he says that the church must seek to interact with and redeem the things of secular society by modeling a new kind of community. However, this transformation should be about developing the church into a genuine culture and subtly reaching out to the culture around it rather than about the church dominating secular society through round after round of political power plays in the so-called "culture wars." The issue is not "taking back America" but taking back the church, allowing it to genuinely be the church as distinct, but not isolated from the broader culture. Clapp presents an odd but appealing mixture of Reformed, Anabaptist, and postmodern perspectives. He crosses boundaries of liberal and conservative, traditional and postmodern, historic and contemporary. If you like closed, neatly defined categories of what is acceptable for the church you won't like this book. But if you want a book that presents and radical (but historic) vision of what the church should be then I highly recommend this book. |
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Review Summary: Dynamic Holiness in a Postmodern World |
Date: 2000-06-12 |
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Details: This is an excellent book for those who want to be challenged out of today's complacent Christianity. Clapp provides a clear vision of how the church can be dynamic and authentic in a postmodern society. He calls the church to an awareness of the syncretism that exists in our own time, and renews the vision of an authentic church that is its own distinct culture. |
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Review Summary: This book will push you to think outside the box |
Date: 2001-03-26 |
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Details: Rodney Clapp's book totally transformed my view of the nature and purpose of the church. Instead of viewing the church as a collection of individuals with a particular philosophy, ideology, or political agenda; Clapp identifies the church as a community that composes a new culture. This culture, he says, should be in the business of transforming society and individuals through what he calls "sanctified subversion". That is, instead of withdrawing from the mainstream culture into our own Christian ghetto (the all too prevalent fortress mentality found among most politically and theologically conservative Christians), he says that the church must seek to interact with and redeem the things of secular society by modeling a new kind of community. However, this transformation should be about developing the church into a genuine culture and subtly reaching out to the culture around it rather than about the church dominating secular society through round after round of political power plays in the so-called "culture wars." The issue is not "taking back America" but taking back the church, allowing it to genuinely be the church as distinct, but not isolated from the broader culture. Clapp presents an odd but appealing mixture of Reformed, Anabaptist, and postmodern perspectives. He crosses boundaries of liberal and conservative, traditional and postmodern, historic and contemporary. If you like closed, neatly defined categories of what is acceptable for the church you won't like this book. But if you want a book that presents and radical (but historic) vision of what the church should be then I highly recommend this book. |
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Review Summary: Clarion Call For the American Church... |
Date: 2005-09-27 |
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Details: As a young seminary student, I have been reading many and varying works on theology, philosophy and biblical studies. Rodney Clapp's book on the church as an alternative people (culture) existing within the world is a clarion call for the questions we need to be asking and the directions our churches need to be moving. Much like, Stanley Hauerwas, Clapp reveals the decay and erosion we have today as a result of the Church being absorbed by Constantine way back in the 4th century B.C. In our pluralist, post-everything society, the time is ripe for the Church to assert itself as God's polis and in doing so actually offer new life or as Jesus said "abundant life" to those who are subjected to a system of destruction and dehumanization.
Clapp's style is candid and written in a lucid manner which will allow the lay reader to understand the theology behind the work wihtout being well versed in historical theology. Ultimately Clapp is not proposing anything new, rather he is pointing the Church back to its starting point. That is, the fact of Jesus' life, death and resurrection as the starting point for any coherent self-understanding. He argues that the Church as God's called out people (like Israel) is the place in which the starting point can be found, affirmed and lived without apology to a culture that has no starting point (e.g. American liberal democracy primed by the Enlightenment).
Pastor's read this book! Members of the body of Christ, read this book, read Acts, then look outside to the perverse and dying culture in which we live and find life as God's polis.
Shabbat Shalom! |
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Review Summary: Profound book. A must read for every Christian. |
Date: 2002-10-08 |
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Details: Rodney Clapp paints a beautiful picture of what it means to be the church. For those of us who have been through countless church splits, arguments, and petty bickering, it gives hope. Yet at the same time it strongly convicts, pushing us toward a higher and more lofty goal. Definitely read this book. |
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