I like to read books that connect ideas and contexts in history … usually balancing “airplane” reading and “home” reading. My “home” read was What Would Jesus Decontruct?” by John D. Caputo (the most recent 2007 addition to “The Church and Postmodern Culture” series from Baker Books). I love Caputo’s style: witty, subtle, and powerful. I like to write across theological and professional sectors too, but dialogue with Caputo is like fencing with d’Artagnan. He disarms you with swift thrusts of reasonableness.
Jesus, he says, would deconstruct the church as a “self-authorizing institution” with the “poetics of the Kingdom”. Christ is the “hauntological” principle that reveals the radical contingency of our present situation. Even the doctrines, polities, and propositions that churchy people have fought over for centuries are shattered by the “event” of incarnation. Jesus’ justice deconstructs law; his forgiveness deconstructs the economy of fair play; his hospitality deconstructs capitalist reciprocity; and his love deconstructs modern possessiveness. Something momentous is going on in history, all right, but it can’t be contained in an ecclesiastical box.
Meanwhile, my “airplane” read was An Introduction to the Desert Fathers by Jason Byassee. This little gem just released in 2007 from Cascade Books (Wipf and Stock) helps Protestant skeptics understand the origins of the monastic movement. These monastics (4th – 6th century men and women of the Egyptian desert) were already doing what Caputo is talking about today. Just a few decades after Constantine, the church’s victory was revealed to be Christ’s defeat. These monastic leaders rejected the self-authorizing official church for soul-searing companionship with Jesus. Many of these monastics were middle class Romans fleeing the emptiness of life for the fullness of Christ. The desert is an admirable place to get away from distractions if you are really serious about faith. Since I am writing this in the midst of another North American Christmas consumer binge, it’s looking pretty good now!
The impressive thing about monastic Christianity is that faith and culture are radically disentangled. This is exactly the terrifying de-construction that the event of Jesus always brings about. While the churchy church has been inextricably caught up in culture since the 4th century, pre-modern and post-modern Christianity sheds property for hair shirts. Faith and lifestyle merge. The chapters of Byassee’s book are not about polities, doctrines, and Christian art … but quietude, compunction, self-control, fortitude, sober living, obedience, humility, charity … oh yes, and visions. Just imagine! One monastic lives in the desert beside a little stream for 30 years and never notices the water! Christ is sufficient to quench his thirst.
These two books led me to dig around in my library (finally stable over the Christmas holidays when nobody needs a consultant) in search of In His Steps by Charles Sheldon. Written in 1898 from small town Kansas, it sold an estimated 30 million copies. We tend to forget his book inspired prohibition and future evangelicals for social action, because the books subtitle (“What would Jesus do?”) also inspired jewelry and bumper sticker sales in a capitalist Christian frenzy of self-congratulation later in the 20th century. Along with Caputo, I remember the book as poignant and simplistic, but Sheldon’s heart was in the right place (namely in the “desert”, deconstructing with Jesus).
Sometimes divine providence mysteriously designs unusual Christmas reading. The pre-modern and the post-modern can make a powerful combination if you want to go beyond Christmas to incarnation.
Tom Bandy
www.easumbandy.com
www.netresults.org
First, let us wish all of you a Blessed Christmas. I think 