For the past few weeks, I've been doing a good bit of reading in general Christian history. It started when I decided to revisit Mark A. Noll's Turning Points, a book I'm considering using to teach a student in the diocesan deacon formation program this fall. Right when I was starting to read through Noll's book, a book I'd put on hold made it to the library shelf, and I found myself beginning Gerald Sittser's Water from a Deep Well. Then another little book seemed to fall into my lap, Justo Gonzalez' The Changing Shape of Church History. It's small but packs a wallop, and I swallowed it over the course of about two days, then found myself backing up to re-read bits and ponder more thoroughly. It's been providing an interesting lens for the other reading I've been doing since.
In the midst of all that, I began reading Susan Wise Bauer's History of the Medieval World (volume 2 of her general history survey, which has some interesting tie-ins, here and there, to church history, and also provides helpful background/context). And then I saw a blog recommendation for Diana Butler-Bass' A People's History of Christianity, which sounded like it had the potential to tie in, at least in some ways, to the ideas presented by Gonzalez. So I put it on hold, thinking I'd have a wait, and was surprised (delighted? dismayed?) when the library got it in right away.
Suddenly I'm in the midst of several "tomes" (no other word will do for some of these hefty volumes) but finding a need to go back and forth between them all as I read and think.
And it really is Gonzalez' little book that's providing the most thoughtful lens for thinking through the rest of it. Not that he hasn't written tomes himself. I was blessed indeed to have his two-volume Story of Christianity as my introduction to the discipline and study of Christian history (thirteen years ago this fall!). I still think those two volumes are some of the most fascinating and readable narratives on Christian history out there, and I'm glad they're on my shelves. I'm also glad that I was familiar enough with his work to pick up Changing Shape, even though it's such a slim, unassuming looking book.
I'm working on a longer review, but in a nutshell, what Changing Shape provides is a reflection on the way the changing map of Christianity (from a Christendom "centralized" in the western world, i.e. the North Atlantic in recent years, to a "decentralized" global Christianity, with multiple centers ranging all over the world) affects how we read Christian history.
History, Gonzalez reminds us, is not simply "what happened" but an interpretation of what happened. And depending on who is doing the seeing, and telling, the story that gets told can change shape. That's exciting; it can also be a little disorienting.
When we look back from the vantage point of our present, the way we see things, even the topography, can change. By topography here, he means those centuries and events that have "pushed up" like mountain ranges in the standard study of Christian history, the sorts of "everyone knows these are the most important things that happened and are worth our serious attention" moments.
I think his concluding insight, the one the book really pushes toward the whole way, is perhaps the most exciting. It's the one that's stayed with me. His point is that we in the west (or global north) don't have to look upon the marginalization of Christianity as a calamity or something to bemoan. Instead of mourning a loss of political, economic or cultural power, we can understand that our power lies in a different way of living (a way that at its best has always been counter-cultural). We can instead choose to focus upon it as an opportunity, an opportunity for the church to live out of a new paradigm (not the triumphalist paradigm of Christendom or an overly spiritualized paradigm where we downplay what's happening in the world). This new paradigm is what he calls "incarnate marginality," a phrase I love because it seems to speak so much out of the story of Jesus himself.
"...Christians must acknowledge that our proper place, both as individuals and as the church, is not necessarily a the center," he writes. "Without condemning Eusebius or Constantine, without declaring the entire Middle Ages apostate, without rejecting the inheritance that we have received from so many centuries of official and extraofficial support by the state and society at large, we must affirm that the proper place for those who follow Jesus Christ is the margin rather than the center; it is the valley rather than the hilltop; it is the cross rather than the throne."
I think this lens of "incarnate marginality" becomes a helpful one as we look at the history of the church, particularly those movements and people who have lived that kind of witness. And there have been so many. It's one reason I've found myself revisiting the stories of the early martyrs, and the work of Athanasius.
I think, though I'm not sure (having only read intro and first chapter thus far) that Butler-Bass is going for something similar when she discusses what she terms "generative Christianity" or "great command Christianity" -- a faith that "transforms the world through humble service to all." But I'm still wrestling with her thoughts.
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