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April 22, 2005

Reimagining Christianity

I wrote this for my own website, which is read by both Episcopalians and non-Episcopalians. As the author is the Dean of our local Cathedral, I thought the review would be of particular interest to Trinity members. Whatever your thoughts on Alan Jones, I expect that any Episcopalian will find the book thought provoking and even inspiring.
Jay Dean

I suspect that most folks will quickly pigeonhole
Alan Jones, Dean of San Francisco's wonderful Grace Cathedral, as another one of those liberal Episcopalian writers and ignore him. Such a quick dismissal is undeserved and a great shame, as Jones presents a viewpoint that needs to be more widely discussed. The Reverend Jones, at this stage in his life, is exploring a spirituality that is very old and even "old-fashioned"; Jones does not set out to "debunk" any biblical stories or re-interpret large areas of the traditional faith. This book is more an effort to deepen Christianity and bring into it something new and something recovered. It is, in my mind, a very Anglican journey Jones is proposing. A deeper spiritual practice rather than a revamped dogma.; what he describes in his Preface as a "shared quest"

He identifies the old structure as "Tribal Christianity", religions fixated on defining who is "us" and who is "them", or who is "in" and who is "out". Redefining how we classify people is not really an advancement, rather we need to abandon altogether the attempt to define tribes. Obviously, this will require a high tolerance for differences, which is a fundamental aspect of Anglicanism but rather a hard thing to sell elsewhere. Jones' solution is to assert that we are all on the "out", and define a new tribe among all those who are struggling to get "in". In other words, anyone who is trying to find a path to the God of Love, whatever the pathway they are walking, is a part of our tribe. Jones is able to endorse this pluralist vision without the falling into the trap of relativism that devalues all beliefs, including his.

It's a hard thing to communicate, and I'm wary of trying to summarize it. For the full argument you should read Jones' book. Let me just say that one has to abandon the belief that one path is "the right one" and the others "wrong". There are flaws in all of the world's religions, none of us has yet achieved perfection, and there may be more than one route to God. Perhaps some approaches work better for some people, and likely some religious movements are truly mired in error. We are too ignorant at this time to be authoritative on this. Jones is asking that we respect the sincerity of one another's quest, find a path that works well for you, that bears good fruit, and learn from others as you can. Jones is very much a Christian with some refreshing ideas about following Christ to the fullest, but he maintains friendships and learns much, he tells us, from learned people in Jewish and Buddhist traditions, and others.

Religion becomes a collective enterprise of cooperation between us and the unknown. Some of us identify the unknown with the Spirit. Others leave it as the unknown. But we participate in the same work of the imagination.

The emerging tribe need not be put off by the three great themes of Christianity because they touch us first on the level of the imagination before they engage the intellect and invite the leaf. Of the woman and her baby, the broken and ruined man, and the community of persons parenthesis which Christians acknowledge as Incarnation --- God in the flesh; redemption --- God in the healing of the world; and Trinity --- God revealed as a community of persons) connect us with each other on the level of common human experience.

In the same way, Christianity's essential sacrament of communion is a sign of what the human project is all about --- all of us gathered around a table where there is plenty of food and room for everyone. It is a vision of love and justice. To these themes are worthy of contemplation by all people of goodwill, whatever they believe, and resonate in the emerging tribe. And the same themes come back to me in a different form and in different stories from the other traditions.

I hope that the excerpt I've selected does not come off as too "New Age"; that's not how this book is. Having laid out his vision for a single varied tribe, Jones turns to the job of reimagining Christianity, starting with these three founding images. As you might expect from an Episcopal cleric, Jones is not a biblical literalist. He is interested in sacrament and beautiful liturgy, and searching for sacredness within our world, an expression of an Incarnational Theology. In turn he addresses the Redemption theme, imagining a religion that heals and removes fear. Finally he expands on his idea of the Trinity as a call for community.

Jones is an engaging writer who presents relatively short, sermonette-sized chapters enlivened with personal stories and reflections. This is not at all an imposing theological track, nor is it a lightweight self-help book. Anglicans will find the book invigorating and thought provoking, others might find it provoking more than just thoughts, but I urge you to hear him out. If you are not a church goer, who is turned-off by images of a Christianity that is judgmental, exclusive, or superstitious, but are hungry for a "mature" spirituality in your life, You might find Reimagining Christianity a welcome surprise.

The book comes adorned with "blurbs" of praise from a very noteworthy list of authors. Among those endorsing the book are, Huston Smith, Barbara Brown Taylor, Peter Gomes, Brian McLaren, Walter Brueggeman, and Jacob Needleman. Those are all authors featured in my collection and their praise is well placed here. Living close to Grace Cathedral, I have a chance now and then to hear Rev. Jones preach. As you might expect, he's pretty good at that too.