Yesterday I came home to an unexpected package from Amazon. Inside was a book that will no doubt be the book everyone’s talking about over the next few months. The next Blue Like Jazz is Rachel Held Evans‘, Evolving in Monkey Town.
This is the story of someone too young to write her own story. Evans knows it–and that’s part of what makes it such a good read.
Like Blue, Evolving in Monkey Town is not just a story about an individual wrestling with questions, having a sure-fire faith all wrapped up only to have it begin to burst with the introduction of hard questions. It is the story of a generation that has gone or is going through the same experience.
Having read through the first quarter or so of the book, Evolving in Monkey Town strikes me as the memoir of the “post-” generation. A world marked by self-descriptors such as “post-modern”, “post-conservative,” and “post-liberal” finds itself simultaneously defined by its past (modern, conservative, or liberal) while having left it behind to find a new expression of a yet-affirmed more ultimate noun.
In this case, “Christianity.”
Those of us who have found ourselves holding onto Christianity while simultaneously parting with a host of things we were told were inseparable from faithfulness to God will resonate with the anecdotes, but most especially with the theological framework that seems to put the stories in proper relief.
That theological framework is, roughly, that how we hold our theology is as as its contents; and, the questions we ask are often as important or more important than the answers we might give.
This is a narrative of storied theology–a memoir brimming with the conviction that the static categories of religious affirmation are much less important for both individual and church than the reality that we are bound up with the story of God that, yes, reaches a certain climax in the work of Jesus, but also carries forward into new days and times and thus finds itself surprisingly reinterpreted in the places to which it comes.
Go grab a copy and let me know what you think.
okie dokie
I am so thankful for your thoughts, writing and theology.
hmm, there’s a copy sitting on my desk. now i might have to read it.
Can I just say first that I am really tired of Anne Lamont and Donald Miler and company. I think they condone and breed the worst kind of narcissism: the kind that disguises itself as a Christian thinking of others. Totally willing to be wrong about that, but I have seen the destructive consequences in a few different forms.
Also, to:
“Those of us who have found ourselves holding onto Christianity while simultaneously parting with a host of things we were told were inseparable from faithfulness to God will resonate with the anecdotes, but most especially with the theological framework that seems to put the stories in proper relief.”
I respond that I am just starting to re-appropriate some of that “host.” I hope books like this don’t encourage people to throw the baby out with the bathwater, leaving Christians with no heritage and repeating the myriad mistakes of the last 2000+ years.
Of course, you may say whatsoever you wish!
As to “the host,” I’m fairly certain that a geocentric universe, spurning of biological evolution, the inerrancy of scripture, God’s status as a pro-Confederacy Republican, etc. are not inseparable components of faithfulness to God and that the church will not only survive but thrive without them. Not sure what particulars you’re thinking of.
Guess I’m thinking of the classical liturgy (along with any intelligent, intentional variations). What can I say, I was raised amid the worship wars and still find myself struggling with the congregational desire to be entertained rather than to worship. That starts a bad precedent for the whole of the Christian lifestyle. But I agree with discarding the “host” if it implies what you have listed above.
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p.s. Love the abstinence image. From a t-shirt?
Interesting. I like liturgy, but find myself not all that compelled by arguments that we should honor it in the regular keeping. But I don’t think that’s what any of these authors are getting at, at least, that’s not the core of their concerns as I read them.
The abstinence image may be from a t-shirt. I’ve seen it on a couple people’s FB pics recently and thought it was worth sharing with the world.
I can’t say I’m a huge Donald Miller fan, either. But, more of that flows from my Berkeley-esque rejection of anything that’s popular. In any case, I am curious about what you have seen as the destructive consequences of entertaining the thoughts set forth by Miller, Lamott, or others.