To those of you who were/are involved in the dialogue on the James Cone thread,
On White Man's Religion, I apologize for the big delay in my response. I'm sure most of you have lost interest by now, but I'll be attempting a comprehensive response within the next few days.
In the meantime, I've been engaged about my Romans 13 paper by some members of
Corpus Paulinum. Loren Rossen and I
have been debating how "anti-imperial" Paul's program really was. Loren has been influenced by
John Barclay's critique of Wright and the "Paul and Empire Coalition," while I am in substantial agreement with
Wright's (2nd half of audio file) and
Jewett's responses to Barclay.
I am about to reply to
Richard Fellows's suggestion that we combine the best insights of Bruce Winter (
benefaction convention) and Mark Nanos (
synagogue authorities) with the hidden transcript approach I take up.
Meanwhile, my friend Zack Exley, a.k.a.
the Garbage Man, has been over on Jim Wallis's God's Politics blog,
challenging us not to let the empire capture our imaginations by limiting our political engagements to local levels. Zack, a political organizer and "recovering political consultant," wants to show that tackling structural issues and moving toward systemic revolution makes us more, not less, faithful to the original Jesus movement. What do you think?
4 Comments:
Read the God's Politics bit about not being 'limited' to the local.
Found it frustrating.
I'm 110% for the Church being globally politically active. But I would love for her to be active by being herself. Voting on national issue might be acceptable, but I think the most faithful way for the Church to 'think big' is just for Christians to come to terms with the fact that God has already made us an international body.
Let's use that body, rather than lusting after the body of the State...
My two cents.
-Daniel-
Hey, Daniel. Great to hear from you. I hear your sentiment. I guess in response my first socratic question would be, What is it about Zack Exley's approach that makes you conclude he is lusting after the body of the State? To me, your position seems to reject out of hand the redeemability of creation.
Perhaps I've been too quick.
But I cringed when I read this:
"Most Christians today live in societies where we can remove, replace, and even become our own political leaders in peaceful elections. Is that an accident? Is it to be ignored? How tragic would it be if the body of Christ opened up new ways for humanity to work together, but Christians were too discouraged to try them?"
I suppose there's more than one way to read this, but I felt it was a little too close to our good old Constantinian compromise.
Ok, democratic nation-states aren't Rome. Perhaps cooperative enterprises can be 'managed' top-down... but I think history teaches us to be wary--especially at the national level, if not at a state or city-level.
Does that make sense?
Dear Thom, I have a blog now.
stop on by.
www.vicitagnusnoster.blogspot.com
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