Desegregating Our Hearts—And Pews
Breaking Down Walls: A Model for Reconciliation in an Age of Racial Strife,by Raleigh Washington and Glen Kehrein (Moody, 241 pp.; $14.99, hardcover);More Than Equals: Racial Healing for the Sake of the Gospel,by Spencer Perkins and Chris Rice (InterVarsity, 238 pp.; $9.99, paper). Reviewed by Edward Gilbreath.
In the wake of the now almost-mythic Rodney King saga, America has been rudely awakened and forced to re-examine the current state of race relations. Among the discoveries is the continued relevancy, some 35 years later, of the words of Martin Luther King, Jr.: “The most segregated hour of America is 11 o’clock on Sunday morning.”
Two recent and remarkably similar books adroitly address race relations in the church, both shedding light and providing hope. Save for the unique personalities of the coauthors, Breaking Down Walls, by Raleigh Washington and Glen Kehrein, and More Than Equals, by Spencer Perkins and Chris Rice, could well be the same book: both are written by a black and white team; both arise from experiences in similar cross-cultural ministries; and both offer thoughtful and challenging strategies for reconciliation during this current wave of racial awareness.
Breaking Down Walls is the more practical of the two books, which may be attributed to its authors’ added years of experience. Washington (an African American) pastors the cross-cultural congregation of Rock of Our Salvation Evangelical Free Church, while Kehrein (who is white) directs the various inner-city services of Circle Urban Ministries. They are partners in a holistic outreach to the Austin community on Chicago’s rough West Side. Part one covers their diverse backgrounds and the circumstances that brought them together.
Kehrein candidly recalls his fledgling years in Ripon, Wisconsin, a WASP community known as the birthplace of the Republican party. The process of his moving from a state of indifference to a poignant sensitivity to the plight of African Americans is a fascinating portrait of an awakened conscience.
Washington’s memories of growing up in segregated Jacksonville, Florida, paint an often disheartening picture of the Jim Crow South. But it is his experience of being “drummed out” of the army by calculated incidents of racism that serves as the turning point in his life—paving the way for Washington’s call to the ministry and ultimately his partnership with Kehrein.
The resulting friendship between the two men is so genuine and clearly providential that if the book were to end here, its “model for reconciliation” would still be effective. However, the book’s second part takes a closer look at the principles that make Rock Church and Circle Urban Ministries prototypes for cross-cultural fellowship. Their many examples of time-tested strategies help to bring the book’s eight principles of reconciliation to life.
Moving beyond passivity
If Breaking Down Walls is the more practical of the two books, More Than Equals is the more didactic. Perkins and Rice, editors of Urban Family magazine and staff members of the John M. Perkins Institute for Reconciliation and Development in Jackson, Mississippi, spare no blows in their crusade to educate the racially illiterate. And they accomplish their goal, combining intriguing surveys of an often forgotten black history with personal testimonies designed to move us beyond our passivity on race relations.
Like their counterparts, Rice and Perkins exhibit a relationship that in itself proves the chasm between white and black Christians need not remain. Rice (a white American), having been raised in Korea by missionary parents, thought himself well-schooled in cross-cultural relationships; but by college, he was stunned to realize he had no true relationships with blacks—a condition he felt God was calling him to change.
Perkins (an African American) represents the essence of the angry, wronged black man who would rather wash his hands of the whole mess, but who is constrained by the gospel and the example of his father (the influential activist/pastor John Perkins) to seek harmony with his white brothers and sisters. To some, Perkins’s brutal frankness may be disturbing, but it is precisely this candor that makes him a credible spokesman for this emotionally charged subject.
Both More Than Equals and Breaking Down Walls have the same goal, and they rely on the same principles to drive home their points. For instance, both cite intentionality as a primary factor in bringing about true cross-cultural relationships: “Racial reconciliation doesn’t happen spontaneously,” write Washington and Kehrein. “[The barriers separating the races] will only come down if, like Jesus, we become intentional about it.” And, not surprisingly, the “ministry of reconciliation” (2 Cor. 5:18) is the acknowledged impetus behind the messages of both books.
Although both volumes have their share of weaknesses (for example, the occasional confusion created by the two-voice narrative in Breaking Down Walls, or a tendency toward verbosity in More Than Equals), they are highly significant books for evangelicals. Many works have dealt with the reality of racial disunity in the church, but this pair offers proven solutions to the problem. Applying those solutions, to move beyond our “11 o’clock, Sunday morning” complacency, is left to us.
When Nations Are “Chosen”
God’s Peoples: Covenant and Land in South Africa, Israel, and Ulster,by Donald Harman Akenson (Cornell University Press, 404 pp.; $29.95, hardcover). Reviewed by Mark Noll, author of A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada (Eerdmans).
Donald Akenson, a widely published historian who teaches at Queen’s University in Ontario, has written a book that should be especially sobering for anyone who feels that the United States enjoys a unique “covenant” with God. His goal is to compare the way that covenantal thinking has shaped the cultures of Northern Ireland (Ulster), the Republic of South Africa, and the modern State of Israel. On one level, the book is splendid comparative history—Akenson has immersed himself in the historical literature of all three societies and has trenchant things to say about how their development followed uncannily similar paths.
On another level, the book is a forceful testimony to the power of the biblical theme of covenant. In Israel, Ulster, and South Africa, energetic individuals who felt that God had singled out their peoples for a special relationship have been inspired to dedicated—even heroic—exertions in constructing societies modeled on biblical patterns. The underside of the picture, however, is that these societies have also manifested a violent “us-them” mentality that justifies inhuman acts toward enemies that function as the “Cannaanites” over against “the chosen.” Akenson writes to illumine, not to indict. But because his illumination is so successful, the indictment is all the more powerful.
Naming God
Speaking the Christian God: the Holy Trinity and the Challenge of Feminism,edited by Alvin F. Kimmel, Jr. (Eerdmans, 337 pp.; $21.95, paper). Swallow’s Nest: A Feminine Reading of the Psalms, by Marchiene Vroon Rienstra (Eerdmans, 255 pp.; $18.95, paper). Reviewed by Stanley J. Grenz, professor of theology at Regent/Carey College, Vancouver, British Columbia, and the author of Revisioning Evangelical Theology (IVP).
Among evangelicals, discussions of theological “feminism” tend to focus on the roles of women in the home and in the church. In the so-called mainline churches, these debates moved off center stage long ago. Now raging is a controversy of far greater theological consequence: the feminist debate over how we speak about God.
The contributors to Speaking the Christian God are convinced that at stake is the central Christian understanding of God’s nature. Their goal is to enter the foray by engaging those feminist thinkers who advocate replacing the traditional trinitarian language (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) with other models of the divine reality.
The essayists are fighting an uphill battle, and they know it. Feminist theology has captured the loyalties of the officials and intellectuals of most mainline denominations, who have elevated these new doctrines to the status of “orthodoxy.” Leslie Zeigler, professor of Christian theology emerita at Bangor Theological Seminary, summarizes the experience of many: “It is impossible to obtain even an acknowledgment of the justification of questioning the feminist agenda. Attempts to encourage a discussion of the theological issues involved in the use of inclusive language for God are met with either a stonewalling resistance or a curt rejection.”
The book’s plaintiffs cannot be dismissed by painting them as reactionary fundamentalists. With few exceptions, they are participants in the mainline denominations. Likewise, they all see themselves as feminists, understood as persons who are “convinced of the absolute equality and dignity of man and woman as created in the image of God.” And they include some of the leading scholars of our day—Elizabeth Achtemeier, Robert Jenson, Thomas Torrance, and Geoffrey Wainwright.
God names himself
The 18 essays in the volume all agree on what is the key theological issue in the controversy: the nature and finality of theological language. Are the traditional trinitarian names for God the result of God’s own self-disclosure and therefore given once, for all time? Or is all language about God merely metaphorical, so that theologians can change it in the interest of overcoming patriarchalism and fostering women’s liberation?
Foundational to the position of the contributors is the premise that “God names himself.” Contrary to the feminist claim, God is not the “great Unknown” for whom we invent arbitrary language. Rather, God has revealed himself; he declares who he is. This divine self-disclosure occurred in God’s historical activity, specifically, in the history of Israel and through Jesus, who named God “Abba.” The authors are convinced that the revelation of God as the triune one is normative for Christian theology and worship.
Their acceptance of the normative status of the traditional language leads the authors to conclude that the feminist renaming of God constitutes an alien intrusion into Christianity. Achtemeier, for example, minces no words: “By attempting to change the biblical language of the deity, the feminists have in reality exchanged the true God for those deities which are ‘no gods.’ ”
Several contributors term this intruder “religious monism,” a viewpoint that rejects all dualisms, including the strict differentiation between God and the world. Crucial to the radical feminist agenda is the revising of the traditional doctrine of “creation out of nothing” in favor of speaking of God as giving birth to creation and of the world as “God’s body.” Equally significant is the monistic reduction of Jesus. Rather than being the unique incarnation of the divine, transcendent Logos, revisionists see him as an expression of the unity between God and the world. By breaking down the “masculine” hierarchy of a monarchial God over the world, feminists hope to open the way for a more “feminine” sense of the interconnectedness of God and the world.
The breasted God
If the appraisal of the current debate by the contributors to Speaking the Christian God is accurate, how should we assess a project such as Marchiene Vroon Rienstra’s feminine paraphrasing of the Psalms? Her educational credentials (M.Div. from Calvin Seminary) and her ministry context (Presbyterian, Reformed, and Christian Reformed) suggest that she does not slavishly follow the radical feminist agenda.
Indeed, Rienstra’s main concern is not theological but pastoral. She is convinced that God is neither male nor female, but encompasses both genders. In Swallow’s Nest, Rienstra offers female images of God for the sake of “those whose unfortunate relationship with fathers and other men makes it impossible to draw close to God imaged as father and male.” But her intent is much wider. She believes that by balancing the traditional male images with female language, “believers will be able with both heart and head to relate to the ‘feminine’ as well as the ‘masculine’ face of God.”
Rienstra does have some affinity with more radical feminists. Like them, she is convinced the Scriptures have a masculine bias, which has deprived the believing community of women’s wisdom and has led to the wounding of many. Through her devotional paraphrase, she seeks to help alleviate this problem. Rienstra finds a hermeneutical license for this enterprise in the divine name El Shaddai. Because the root word in shaddai means “female breast,” she claims (but does not substantiate) that the name may be translated “breasted God.”
I sympathize with aspects of the feminist critique. Indeed, some women are put off by male-oriented terms for God. I applaud attempts to overcome these problems. Swallow’s Nest puts us on notice that there may be more feminine imagery in Scripture than we generally see.
Yet I must confess that many feminist works, including Rienstra’s, leave me with some of the gnawing questions posed in Speaking the Christian God. One concerns consistency. A moderate revisionist like Rienstra erroneously assumes that the Psalms can support a consistently feminine paraphrase. Female imagery seems out of place in texts that portray a God who is characterized by more male-oriented imagery, such as avenging protection, judgment, and rulership.
A second question is that of propriety. Does not a paraphrase as thoroughgoing as Rienstra’s presume to know more about what documents are needed by the people of God than the Holy Spirit knew? With this query we come to the heart of the protest found in Speaking the Christian God. Many feminists argue that the Bible and Christian tradition are hopelessly masculine and therefore in need of radical surgery. Their attempt to “improve” on the biblical tradition, however, calls into question any concept of revealed truth, any suggestion that human language can truly reflect the divine essence.
Finally, with the essayists I wonder about the solution feminists propose. I am simply not convinced that new terminology will release us from whatever patriarchal bondage and male bias continues to haunt the church.
Rather than replacing the biblical language for God, we need a renewed awareness of how that language stands as a critique over all oppressive structures and all fallen relationships. In addition, we could use a deeper appreciation of the richness of theological metaphor and simile that the Holy Spirit placed in the biblical writings.
The debate over theological language will not subside in the near future. Speaking the Christian God and Swallow’s Nest suggest that it is intensifying and is even spilling over into evangelical circles. Indeed, the question of our conception of God may become the theological question of the 1990s. Rather than seeking to evade the issue, evangelical thinkers would do well to face it head-on and attempt to make a helpful contribution. These two volumes call us to take seriously the feminist critique of the biases present within the Christian tradition and to push even deeper in discovering what God has revealed to us in Scripture.
