Philip Jenkins, the Man

Jenkins is quite a busy man, isn't he? He produces consistently excellent and even prescient books at a steady, dependable clip. His Hidden Gospels debunked DVC before the novel was even published. The Next Christendom has defined the discussion on global Christianity since its publication. One book of his that I particularly enjoyed is one that doesn't seem to come up much - his Dream Catchers: How Mainstream America Discovered Native Spirituality was a great jaunt through the uses and misuses of Native American spiritual traditions, with a clear eye to how Native Americans themselves have received the interest in their religions.

Jenkins' new book, coming this fall, is called The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South.

As you might expect, the starting point is the disagreement between certain North American and European Anglicans and certain Anglicans in Africa and other parts of the world about how to understand the Scriptural injunctions against certain sexual behaviors, particularly homosexuality.

But what you might not expect is where Jenkins goes from there - you might expect a dissection of Scriptural scholarship, the uses and misuses of contemporary schools of scholarship, and so on. That's not exactly what you get. What you get is much deeper than that, and in the end, more inspiring and challenging.

The question we're asked to consider is, "Why do Christians of the Global South tend to read the Bible differently?" The answer some might give is that they're not advanced enough, they don't have the same kind of theological education that the North has. The scholarship hasn't reached them yet.

Jenkins' answer is essentially this: They read the Bible differently because they live it. Ordinary Christians of the Global South are not at a distance from the Scriptures - the world in which they live is echoed in the Scriptures in vivid, direct ways and in turn, the themes from the Scriptures they tend to emphasize deepen those connections. Jenkins looks at social structures, sensibilities about evil, about spirits, healing, miracles, wisdom (Proverbs is a very popular book in these areas), the challenges of starting new church communities (James figures in here, in a big way), not to mention images of agriculture, nomadic life, poverty, dependence and so on.

It's quite a nuanced book, asking, for example, the Western reader to take a critical look at why we either spiritualize or ignore the wealth of discourse about healing that's present in the New Testament. He invites us to look past our initial impressions of the Prosperity Gospel, so popular in some parts of the Global South, and to examine in on a deeper level. He points to the desperation so many constantly live with, the total unpredictability of life, the helplessness.

For a Northern world that enjoys health and wealth to a degree scarcely imagined by any previous society, it is perilously easy to despise believers who associate divine favor with full stomachs or access to the msot meager forms of schooling or health care; who seek miracles in order to flourish, or even survive. The Prosperity Gospel is an inevitable by-product of a church containing so many of the very poorest.

It's a fascinating approach because while Jenkins begins with the headline-grabbing issue of homosexuality, he never returns to it. He doesn't need to, for once you've worked through his presentation of the role of the Bible in Christian life in the Global South - as a liberating, powerful Word that directly relates and images the way people live and subsequently gives new, positive, redemptive shape to those lives, the whole language of "fundamentalism" and "conservative" becomes irrelevant. 

Jenkins is no romantic about anything, least of all about Christianity in the Global South. He points out its complexities, addresses the tensions and differences that lie between much of the popular reception of the Scriptures and the well-developed theologies of liberation and feminism that some African, South American and Asian academics produce (I think the book could use a bit more clarity in teasing these out, myself), and addresses inconsistencies, rogue interpretations, problematic consequences, particularly in regard to women (a mixed bag, since many women, particularly in charismatic movements, are empowered and liberated by Scripture, but others find themselves trodden more harshly underfoot by those who use Scripture to justify doing so)  and the real issue of selectivity in regard to texts.

But even with the ambiguities and questions about consequences, the question that grows and looms larger and larger as the book progresses is not, "How do you interpret the Bible," but rather, "How do you live with the Bible? How do we let ourselves be challenged by it?" The question is applicablity and immediacy.

Now, there's a lot of possibilty for discussion here. There are, of course, many US Christian churches that do reject the liberal, mainline approach that distances us from Scripture and presents it as words to live by rather than a Word that speaks. There are Christian groups and traditions that don't, for example, over-spiritualize healing or see evil as real. Of course, and they're all over, in various permutations. But what Jenkins is getting at is grappling with the distance from the power of the text that is the consequence of a prosperous society with plenty of health care (even as it is inequitably distributed and increasingly expensive), and where no one lives as they do in the garbage dumps outside of Rio or the slums of Lagos. But does the dynamic go the other way as well - this Jenkins doesn't really ask. Is it just that our lives are physically and psychologically at a distance from the world of the Old and New Testaments or does the dominant mode of Scriptural interpretation put us at a distance? Or is it an interplay between the two, just as the powerful, direct role of Scripture in the religious life of the Global South is the consequence of mutual reinforcement of life realities and intepretation.

It's a good book, with much food for thought that offers a useful way of considering the different ways of understanding Scripture between North and South, the limitations of both and persistently challenges the Northern/Western Christian to confront the question, not of "Why do those people believe this about Scripture?" but rather, "Why don't we?" It sets this crucial question of Scripture interpretation, that leads clergy from all denominations to say harsh things about each other, in a fascinating context that actually makes a lot of sense.

Comments

[Christopher Johnson]

Thanks. This just went to the top of my stack.

[Annalucia]

Mine too. Thanks for the heads-up, Amy.

[James Kabala]

I haven't read this book yet, but I disagree that THE NEXT CHRISTENDOM didn't romanticize the "South." Very often, Jenkins seemed to be defining "orthodox" as whatever the South, particularly Africa, likes, and "unorthodox" as whatever Africa dislikes. For example, while rightly castigating Europeans and North Americans for such things as having a tolerant attitude toward homosexuality, he defended Africans who wished to maintain animal sacrifice, even though that would strike at the heart of Christianity by seeming to deny the efficacy of Christ's one sacrifice as sufficient for all time. He also ignored the fact that Greeks, Romans, Germans, and American Indians all had to give up animal sacrifice when they became Christian, acting as if Africa was the first time the Church had ever faced this issue and implying that only prejudice could explain Western resistance to the idea.
Even more incredibly, he discussed nonchalantly Africans who want the Blessed Virgin incorporated into the the Trinity, even predicting that the Catholic Church would "probably" adopt this view.
It was an excellent book in many ways, but at times it was a toxic brew of a genitals-centered* definition of orthodoxy and a political correctness that treated all criticism of Africa as potentially racist.
* Except as regards African polygamy, which he also defended.

[Dan Berger]

James, I have just ordered the book version from ILL; but the original article in the Atlantic has been required reading in my "Christian Values in Global Community" course for some time, and I don't remember quite what you say.

I'd say that Jenkins simply sets out the sorts of Christianity (both orthodox and heretical) that are emerging in the Global South, along with the demographic evidence. He doesn't really seem to make a value judgement except along the lines of "these are the majority of the world's Christians and we in the West aren't quite so dominant as we like to think."

That said, I can't speak to whether he said what you claim in the book version.

[Kevin Jones]

I don't remember much about The Next Christendom, but my impression was that Jenkins' book was written more to assuage Western Christians that their faith wasn't dying in the face of secularism, because Christianity is hyperactive in the Third World.

I definitely don't think he was an outright defender of polygamy, so much as a teacher trying to show us how the sects rationalized the practice. I don't remember his claim about Mary and the Trinity at all. He was writing a sociological book, not a theological one.

[Nick]

Odd that a Prosperity Gospel didn't ever take off in the Middle Ages when the conditions in Europe were closer to that of the modern "south."

Likewise, a spiritualising of the miraculous and even outward skepticism towards them also began in 16th century Europe. Certainly this attitude began in the cities, but life even in the cities was far more touch and go than it is for us, or even many of our contemporaries in the global south.

[Alan K. Henderson]

Nick,

Which parts of medieval Europe are you talking about? A Prosperity Gospel would have made sense only in parts fo Europe where upward mobility existed - i.e. where feudalism did not exist. Are you comparing England, the Netherlands (post-independence) and the Hanseatic League to the modern South?