I’ll be perfectly honest – I had a hard time writing this post.  I’ve had multiple people ask me recently why there has been nothing at the Sojourner’s blog about the overturning of Prop 8 or about the struggle of LGBT folks for basic rights.  My queer friends who deeply respect the organization as a defender of justice for all ask why no one is writing about justice for them or celebrating when such justice is achieved.  My usual response has been, “yeah, someone really should write about that for Sojourners.”  That is until I was called out on my hypocrisy.  Why was I so willing to stick my neck out (and be ripped apart) for so many other oppressed groups, but not for homosexuals?  Why was I remaining silent?

Those challenges hit me hard.  They opened old wounds and deep regrets of a time when I had been silent before that still cause me pain.  Tim was one of my closest friends in high school.  We knew each other from church youth group and would spend hours together discussing books or playing cards in some coffee shop.  We went to college in different states and in those pre-cell phone and pre-Facebook days when AOL was still pay-by-the-minute, we drifted apart.  I heard through the grapevine that he had come out of the closet and that all of our other youth group friends refused to associate with him anymore.  But even then I didn’t reconnect with him, caught up as I was in my own college life.  After graduation, I had no way to get in touch with him, but the desire to contact him and just let him know I still was his friend weighed heavy on my heart.  I always thought that someday I would find a way to reach him.  But then a few years ago while I was still living in another state my mom called and mentioned offhand that Tim had died after being hit by a car while walking home from a grad school class.  Apparently many of our former close friends from high school had refused to even attend the funeral in protest of his orientation.

I had remained silent for too long.  I don’t know if he assumed I condemned and rejected him like the rest of our youth group friends, I never got the chance to tell him otherwise.  I missed an opportunity to show love to the hurting and I will forever regret my silence.  And I miss my friend.

So I knew that I could not remain silent now.  Even as I am unsure of what exactly to say, I knew I had to be a voice standing in solidarity and celebration of the overturning of Proposition 8.  Our LGBT brothers and sisters need to see now more than ever that they are loved by the church – that we can come alongside them and mourn when they mourn and rejoice when they rejoice.   They need to see that the church sees them more than just as objects to be debated.  If we remain silent now by failing to publicly celebrate this momentous occasion we will have missed our opportunity to show love to the hurting.

So I am celebrating with friends who can now enjoy the same cultural and legal benefits of marriage as I can.  Who can now visit their partners of many years in the hospital and include their spouse in their health coverage.  And I join them in their hope that one day these basic civil rights will not only be available in a small handful of few states, but all across our great nation.  At the same time, I express my sympathy as they and their families continue to be thrust into the centers of controversy – forcing them to fight to hold onto basic civil rights in our society.  I don’t even pretend to understand their struggle to simply live normal lives and the day to day pain that causes, but I do know that I can’t contribute to that continued pain by choosing to remain silent.  I can’t wait for someone else to speak up for me – I can’t outsource loving my neighbor.  And so I rejoice with the parts of the body of Christ who are celebrating being granted one small portion of the privileges I already enjoy.  It seems almost pathetic and nowhere near enough, but it’s all I can think to do.

Last summer my inbox filled up with angry responses to my post recounting the often ignored history of the slaughter of the Native American’s at the Taos Pueblo (men, women, and children took sanctuary in the church and the US Army burned them alive inside). I was called every name in the book for daring to question the greatness of the US and our right to Manifest Destiny. Then recently, my post supporting the Cordoba House (the mosque going in near Ground Zero) was linked to at the Cordoba House site to demonstrate that some Christians do support the project. That of course brought on a new wave of hate in my inbox. From those accusing me of supporting the pedophile religion of Satan to those telling me I was mocking the power of Jesus by tolerating Muslims, I witnessed the overwhelming animosity Christians hold towards the other. The words of Jesus to love our neighbor apparently don’t apply if that neighbor looks or believes differently than we do.

Out of everything I have written, that these two posts should elicit such visceral responses demonstrates how deep the issues of racism and prejudice still are in the church today. Oh, churches might give lip service to accepting others and being “colorblind,” but in reality those fears and prejudices run deep. The general message of the white American church is eerily similar to a white person saying “I’m fine with black people; I just don’t want them living next door.” So we are fine with collecting dream catchers and turquoise jewelry and seeing sexy Native American teens running around shirtless as they turn into wolves, but not with listening to their side of the historical story or admitting to our country’s acts of terrorism against their nations. And some even say they are fine with Muslims as long as they don’t put a mosque where we can see it or ask us to engage in reconciliation projects. Stereotypes and prejudices are preferred to the truth and anger erupts if such positions are questioned or challenged.

Granted, many Christians aren’t even okay with the lip-service tolerance or the “equal as long as they are separate” mentality. Recently Pastors Terry Jones and Wayne Sapp of Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, FL declared September 11, 2010 to be International Burn a Koran Day. In a YouTube video (warning – video contains footage of a burning Koran) he tells viewers “if you call yourself Christian you should be burning the Koran because it is of the devil.” Their blog even lists the top ten reasons to burn a Koran as if it is some sort of late night comedy routine (interestingly enough, I've heard most of the arguments they list used against the Bible as well). Similarly, in a recent trip back to Taos, NM I heard some white Christians discussing how the genocide of the Native American nations was a blessed gift from God to eliminate the satanic influence of their cultures from our “one nation under God.” There are some things that are just so extreme and so absurd that it is hard to believe people are even saying them much less saying them in the name of Christ, but for many Christians this sort of hatred is at the core of their faith practice. Vengeance and revenge against the other has superseded the commands to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us.

The question that plagues me is if the church will ever repent of its allegiance to hate and start following in the way of Chris instead? It seems like the church has embraced a culture of hatred. I used to have a bumper sticker on my car that said “I’m for the Separation of Church and Hate,” but someone found its anti-hate message so offensive that they vandalized it with a marker. On top of that, much of the church has lent its ear to the false prophets who mock the words of Jesus and who command their followers to run from the churches that encourage us to love our neighbor or to set the oppressed free. When the truth of God has been replaced by these racist and hate-filled lies of our culture, it is hard at times to have hope for the church. When yet another hate email arrives in my inbox questioning my faith because I spoke out against acts of violence and terrorism against non-white American peoples, I have to wonder where Jesus is in the church these days. But even amidst all that darkness there are glimmers of hope. I see the Christians (the National Association of Evangelicals even) asking that the International Koran Burning Day be canceled in the name of Jesus. I see the handful of Christians willing to stand with Muslims as they build the Cordoba House. These are public voices presenting to the world the side of Christianity that isn’t defined by violence and hatred. They may be few, but it is enough to keep believing that the core of Christianity hasn’t been completely corrupted or destroyed.

But, obviously, Beck’s portrayal of liberation theology wasn’t exactly positive. Besides calling it socialist (seriously dude, stop being such a one trick pony), he said it wasn’t Christian because it focused on social sin and “collective salvation” instead of the strictly personal salvation message that is at the heart of Beck’s interpretation of Christianity. Granted, Beck knows his audience. His average viewer most likely believes that the message of Christianity can be reduced to this concept of one’s personal relationship with God. The message one hears in many conservative evangelical American churches can be boiled down to “Jesus died for ME. God demands MY worship. I must attend church to strengthen MY faith.”

To question this self-focused religion (even by proposing an outward purpose for our faith) is tantamount to heresy. For instance, I’ve been reading critiques of the evangelical feminist movement and many of them mock the movement because it prompts people to focus on the needs of women and men instead of solely focusing on God. These books suggest that if we were true Christians, we would only care about our relationship with God and not the petty needs of other people. To serve others or to care for people apparently have nothing to do with our personal relationship with God and so therefore must be cast as a deterrent to faith.

I’ve heard the same reasoning applied to Christians engaging in environmental action. I got in trouble when I was in junior high for wearing a “save the dolphins” necklace. I was told that in caring for the dolphins I was worshiping the creation and not the creator. My time and energy should be devoted only to developing my personal relationship with God – which at the time was defined as reading my Bible, praying, doing devotions, singing, and attending church. And as I’ve written about before, I received a similar response at a moms group when I mentioned how important ethical consumption was in my life. I was informed that as a wife and a mother, God does not expect me to care for the poor, but to only make sure I am fulfilling my role in tending to my family (since that is how a woman best serves God).

This “it’s all about me” religion generally masquerades as being “all about God.” In fact in such circles books, buttons, and bumper stickers that say “it’s not about me” are quite popular. And while I think there are serious issues with some of the self-deprecating, soul-silencing, and passion-erasing messages that such a stance often promotes (like telling women they are selfish for pursuing a career or that to cure depression one just needs to get over oneself and pray more), on the whole this sort of religion is very self-focused.

But the disturbing consequence of making Christianity all about MY personal relationship with Jesus is that we eliminate our neighbor. Oh, we are taught to pray for our neighbor in order to strengthen our own faith. We are taught to fear the corrupting influence of our neighbor. And, above all, we are taught to condemn our neighbor. But we have inoculated ourselves from having a neighbor to love. If we are not to care about the plight of women, or the destruction of the environment, or the oppressed third world farmer because it would take away from our complete devotion to God, then the idea of loving our neighbor becomes a meaningless concept. That command then becomes so confusing that we have to start focusing on the “as yourselves” part of the verse instead – making sure that each of us loves ourselves enough to devote ourselves only to God.

Having no neighbors to love does make our faith easier. As long as we aren’t going on murder sprees, cheating on our spouse (or looking at porn), and only gossiping in the form of “prayer requests” we don’t have to do the hard work of repentance very often. But add social sin into the mix and say that part of worshiping God involves caring for the poor and oppressed and faith becomes exponentially more difficult. None of us could claim a good relationship with God by those standards. And most of us would have to drastically alter our consumeristic lifestyles in order to avoid daily sin. So therefore it is easier to ignore the parts of the Bible that tell us God hates our worship and closes his ears to our prayers unless we are caring for the poor and the oppressed than to actually figure out how to do it. It is easier to label (and mock) such things as socialism or to say that loving our neighbor distracts us from loving God than it is to repent of social sin. It is easier to say, “MY faith is all about ME and MY relationship with God” than it is to making living sacrifices of ourselves.

So Glenn Beck gets it right – at least when it comes to understanding the felt needs of his target audience. Who cares if you are ignoring scripture and rewriting Christianity, the best way to keep ratings high is to define right living and true religion as looking out for number one. Because, seriously, who needs a neighbor to love when we have ourselves?

What I found fascinating though was seeing a picture of Evangelicalism from this time period that mirrored exactly what I grew up with in the 80’s and 90’s and that still exists today. The young evangelicals of the 1970’s did influence certain streams of evangelicalism, but this more fundamentalist variety retained a dominant voice. Interestingly enough, the streams had so diverged by the end of the 1970’s that people today in either camp are often surprised that the other exists. It’s like how repeatedly on this blog when I share my personal church experience there are always a couple of people who say that I am misrepresenting evangelicals with my portrayals. Of course, not all evangelicals are the same, the stream they know and the stream I know are just very different. I just wish the discussions could sometimes get past the debate of “whose evangelical experience is correct?”

So for instance, take this passage from the book on the role of women in traditional evangelical churches (note – Orthodox here refers to the new orthodoxy of doctrinally correct evangelicals)

Orthodoxy has not yet taken Women’s Liberation seriously. In almost all non-Pentecostal Evangelical or Fundamentalist denominations, women are not ordained to the ministry. “Unmarriageable” types, however, may be encouraged by their churches to make the ultimate sacrifice – to become a missionary. Single females are welcome on the mission field, but not in the home pulpit. Alternatively, an aspiring young lady with a graduate degree in theology might be called by an Orthodox church to become an unordained director of Christian education – for less pay than her ordained male counterpart would get for the same job. But, for a marriageable young lady in the typical Fundamentalist or Evangelical congregation, the highest vocational aspiration she can have is to become the wife of a minister. Every Orthodox pastor – lest he be regarded as a playboy or, worse yet, a homosexual – must have a wife. In taking on a minister, the young woman will lose her identity completely. The ideal pastor’s wife is simply an extension of her mate – sweet, sociable but not aggressive, talented, above reproach in her behavior and, above all, entirely submissive to the will and career of her husband. As such, she becomes a “nonperson” in every sense of the word. P.58-59

That perfectly describes (in far more blunt language than anyone would ever use today) the sort of evangelicalism I grew up in and still encounter on a regular basis. But many of the women I encounter online (i.e. those who already are educated and progressive enough to be participating in discussions about theology and religion), do their best to deny that women are ever treated that way within the evangelical world they know. While some of them do eventually take the time to reflect and admit that their voice has at times been silenced, they have never had to truly be seen as a “nonperson.” In my experience though women that are taught to lose their identity are also told that they shouldn’t think for themselves, and therefore rarely are present in conversations on religious matters. But it breaks my heart to see generations of women continuing to be taught to be nothing. I grew up in that environment and still have a foot in that world so I know it’s out there. But for many progressive evangelicals (or at least those with progressive evangelical roots), it can be easy to forget history and not grasp the nuances of our differences.

In some ways, just getting a glimpse of this history and understanding differences is helpful. I also wonder though if finding ways to say engage these "nonperson" women and help the ones who are cracking under the pressure of years of suppression of the self would be easier if we all were just open and honest about the sorts of pain that occur in the church without fearing tainting our own church’s reputations due to guilt by association? I don’t know, but sometimes a good understanding of where we all have come from helps mitigate that fear.

When I was 3 that answer was sufficient for me and so I said a prayer to invite Jesus into my heart. The good news as it were was all about me – making sure I got to go to heaven when I died. I didn’t stop to ask what Jesus meant about preaching the gospel of the kingdom, or what it meant when he said he had come to preach the gospel to the poor, or even what it meant to be a disciple and follow the disciplines Jesus demands of his own. I didn’t wonder why I was only taught the gospel about Jesus, and not the gospel of Jesus. I knew my response to “what is the gospel?” and so I didn’t even think to ask those questions for a long time.

Honestly, what really pushed me to start to see the gospel as being about more than just me was how the etymology of the word captured my attention. Wikipedia gives a brief history of the term as follows –

Good News is the English translation of the Koine Greek ευαγγέλιον (euangelion) (eu "good" + angelion "message"). The Greek term was Latinized as evangelium, and translated into Latin as bona annuntiatio. In Old English, it was translated as gōdspel (gōd "good" + spel "news"). The Old English term was retained as gospel in Middle English Bible translations and hence remains in use also in Modern English.

I loved the dual meaning the term gōdspel – or good spell – evokes in modern English. As a major sci-fi/fantasy/mythology geek, I conjured up images of deep magic working to heal a broken world. The darkness that has crept into our world being fought by the good spells of the power of light.

But this play on words was more than just an interesting literary image for me; it pushed me to start thinking through what it really meant for all things to be reconciled to God. Like a good spell intended to transform the world and push back the darkness, the good news of Christ reaches further than I had ever imagined. The scriptures speak of God so loving the whole world that he sent his son Jesus. We also read of Jesus proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom where the oppressed are set free, the blind given sight, and the brokenhearted healed. The gospel of Jesus challenges believers to pray that God’s Kingdom will be manifest on earth as in heaven, that every person has their daily bread, and that all debts are forgiven. In these inclusive passages I began to see that the gospel as preached in scripture was far bigger than a formula that ensured I went to heaven when I died. Jesus was serious about bringing actual good news to all, and boldly proclaimed that in him this reconciliation of all things had begun. Broken relationships could be healed – shattered relationships within families, amongst nations, amidst creation, and between us and God could be finally be made right. This isn’t just good news for someday in heaven, for, as Jesus proclaimed, in him the prophesies of the poor finding hope, the oppressed being set free, and the blind finding sight are already fulfilled. Those who suffer from oppression and poverty have tangible hope here and now. The good spell has been cast, the deep magic is as work, and the light is pushing back the darkness as Christ reconciles all things to himself.

The gospel, the good news, is about so much more than an economic transaction where I get a ticket to heaven in exchange for intellectually assenting to an idea about Jesus. The gospel is good news for the world. It is about God loving the world enough to send his son and establish his Kingdom. It is the gospel of Jesus, the new way of being that he preached. This good news isn’t just something we believe in or talk about, but something we are called to celebrate and embrace. If it is truly good news we will joyfully accept the challenge to follow in the disciplines of Christ – being his hands and feet working to heal all shattered relationships through his reconciling power. We live out the good news to the world.

Out of sheer curiosity, I went through the archives on my computer and read through testimonies I had written in the past. These were my faith stories as I had written them to apply to Wheaton College Grad School, to work at a Baptist church, and to serve as a church-planter (and no, I will not be posting them here). Each of these focused on two main events in my life – when at the age of three I prayed to ask Jesus to come into my heart and my decision at age 12 to “make my faith my own.” Other themes – feeling the need to tell others about Jesus and the rollercoaster emotions of feeling close to Jesus – supported these two primary events. That decision of where I was going when I died and my choice to stay in the church were what I knew those reading my story wanted to hear – they were what I believed to be the most important moments in my faith history.

But these days I find it uncomfortable to be asked to tell of the moment I became a Christian. I don’t believe that some magical transaction occurred on Oct. 17, 1981 as I sat on my dad’s lap and repeated a few words after him. Before that moment I had believed like any child in what I had been told about Jesus, saying that prayer was simply part of my formative journey as a believer. Similarly, I no longer talk about my faith in terms of certainty regarding where I will go when I die. I was recently told that a local church in its membership interviews asks the question “if you died tonight how certain are you of where you will go?” The response they are looking for to allow people to continue in the membership process is “100% certain I will go to heaven.” Those that reply otherwise are unknowingly streamed into a Christianity 101 class instead of the membership class. My response to this (even ignoring the whole question of if we go to heaven or if as the Bible says are resurrected to the new earth) is to ask what is the role of faith if certainty is what is required. These terms of “moments of decision” and “certainty” are no longer part of my lexicon as I tell my faith story.

These days my testimony is less an argument written to prove to others that I have jumped through the right hoops it takes to be a Christian, and more of a travel narrative of my faith pilgrimage. My story has changed, my narrative style has changed, and even what I call it has changed. I know I have not arrived at anything, I value faith far more than certainty, and what I believe is no more important than how I live out that belief. My story encompasses those changes and embraces my questions and doubts as simply being an authentic part of my journey as opposed to evidence that could be used against me in determining if I am in or out. I am still on this journey, even as I tell of its twists and turns. What I learn along the way and terrain I am traversing at the moment as I follow Jesus matter just as much as any particular moment along the way. My story has become more of an epic adventure as opposed to a persuasive essay.

I saw his lawyer make that assertion in a TV interview and the reporter could barely hold it together, saying “what idiot fed you that line?” The lawyer simply said that most Christian theologians would say that Christianity is an offshoot of Judaism, to which the reporter said something along the lines of “good luck with that.”

On the human level, I wish these parents weren’t using their daughter as a pawn in their bitterness and revenge games. And I also don’t claim to understand the struggles parents of differing traditions face in choosing how to expose their children to the diversity of their faiths. But on a theoretical level, I am interested in how this has played out. I know that the theological emphasis on the historical roots of Christianity is fairly recent, and that a willingness to see Jesus as the Jewish rabbi he was has been slow to emerge. But, one would think there enough of those cheesy “My Boss is a Jewish Carpenter” bumper stickers around that the wider culture would catch on that Christians are finally acknowledging our roots. I honestly don’t know of any Christian who wouldn’t say that our faith is based in Judaism, worships the same God, and treasures at least some of the same scriptures (it is a very different story when it comes to acknowledging the mutual roots of our faith with those who practice Islam).

Granted, most of the public perception of Christians is that of hate-filled crusaders fighting to keep away those that are not exactly like them. Since there is such a poor history in how Christians have interacted with Jews in the past, no wonder people would be surprised to hear a Christian claim roots in Judaism (especially for such manipulative ends). I doubt that this case will spark real theological dialogue, but I find myself wondering what can (or should) be done to help promote our commonalities. Christianity cannot be understood apart from Judaism (wouldn’t exist apart from it). How can that best be discussed in the wider culture without prompting displays of incredulity?

I had read The Da Vinci Code before it got really popular (I was on a “intellectual thriller” reading kick at the time). A year or so later I heard the pastor at the church I worked at talking about an upcoming Sunday School series he was leading about how evil the book was. He was shocked to hear that I had actually read the book, since he had not and had no plans to read it (even as he taught a class about it). I soon learned that his was the typical response of many evangelical Americans. When confronted with an idea that is outside the way they had been taught to see the world, they engaged fight or flight – denounce the work as evil or protect themselves from being exposed to its ideas.

Hence Dan Brown’s asides in The Lost Symbol.

I don’t agree with all of Brown’s ideas in The Da Vinci Code or The Lost Symbol (that’s not my point here), but I appreciate how he started a conversation around topics that might otherwise remain hidden. There is truth in the fact that the church is driven by ideology. The Bible we have today was shaped by opinions of factions in the church. Systems of patriarchy marred the name of Mary Magdalene by suggesting then upholding as doctrine that she was a prostitute. With the way Bible history is taught (or isn’t) in churches and schools today, this side of the story gets forgotten as embarrassing history to the point that basic biblical scholarship is labeled shocking heresy by the average Christian. Whether or not one agrees with Brown’s ideas, he at least helped some people ask if perhaps their way of viewing the world isn’t the only way.

It’s when we are willing to think about our beliefs in those ways that we truly learn. Granted we might end up believing as we always have, or we might tweak our beliefs a little, or change them entirely. And while I understand the people that instinctually engage with fight or flight when presented with anything other, what I don’t understand are the people who go through the charade of pretending to engage with other ideas only to reassert their original belief because they feel like they have to. I read a book recently that did just that. It claimed to be a fresh new perspective for evangelicals on a controversial topic, and while it did a great job deconstructing why a new perspective is needed, in the end it simply reiterated the same old traditional answer. In that evangelical tradition only one answer on the topic is acceptable, and so instead of actually allowing the intellectual wrestling to actually inform his perspective, the author ignored everything he had written about and parroted back the one acceptable answer. It made no sense. It wasn’t intellectually honest. But it kept the author (and publisher) safe within the box of their tradition. It wasn’t about truth, it was about allegiance.

So that’s why I am beginning to care less and less about being labeled a heretic. The term has nothing to do with truth (as much as they accuse us postmodern of abandoning truth). It has everything to do with toeing the line of a particular tradition. Call it what you will – “orthodoxy” “historic Christianity” “biblical Christianity” – all it is is the box that you feel comfortable in and pledge allegiance to. People who look, think, and act like you are in and everyone else is out. And while I fully acknowledge the need for community and tradition and admit I have allegiances, when that box becomes a shield to defend against ever learning anything new or entering a conversation in order to grow, then I have no use for the box. So while I love and appreciate (to varying degrees) The Apostles’ Creed, Augustine, Martin Luther, Calvin, Barth, and McLaren, I’m not going to exchange my faith in the living transforming God in order to cement myself in their camps. I may be a heretical Barthian or C.S. Lewisian, but since that really isn’t the point of my faith, I no longer really care.

While the topic of truth gets a lot of air-time these days, few actually take the time to define what they are talking about or move beyond critiquing the "other side." Franke though stays true to an evangelical affirmation of truth while at the same time thoughtfully engaging with the reality of pluralism. His nuanced approach to the discussion doesn't rubber-stamp any extreme, but admits the complexity associated with faith and truth. And for that, I found his work to be refreshing. He admits upfront that "the expression of biblical and orthodox Christian faith is inherently and irreducibly pluralist" (7). But this isn't an in-your-face assertion that must be swallowed whole; it is instead the idea that the whole book seeks to unpack and explore. With a faithful commitment to scripture and a tender compassion for the reader, Franke demonstrates how pluralism is not something to be feared or fought but is instead simply a beautiful intrinsic aspect of not just our faith but all creation.

I appreciated how Franke in his discussion of truth quickly moved beyond the absolute and relative dichotomies. Neither accurately represents truth as the first tries to commoditize it for the sake of power and the second deny it in the name of tolerance. Pluralism and truth are far more complex than the extreme camps allow us to admit. Our world is diverse, as is our faith. And Franke rightly points out that culture and our faith is always changing, God never leaves us where we are at, but is constantly transforming us with the gospel. The constant renewing of our minds allows us to faithfully claim traditions in the church as well as celebrate the new things God is doing. The celebration of plurality affirms the "importance of multiple perspectives in the apprehension and communication of truth" (40). Just as The Father, Son, and Spirit are one even as they are different, the church can be one while living fully into our own diversity.

I also was grateful for Franke's assertion that we can never let our particular cultural setting trump our commitment to truth. We are situated in culture, but when we start to assume that our cultural habits are the only way to present truth, we are in fact limiting God and truth. Scripture and God cannot be subject to cultural assumptions, but must be celebrated in their plurality. Similarly, we should remember that God doesn't seek to assimilate the Other and make us all the same either. Franke brilliantly reminds us that we can be silencing God when we do not listen to voices that might not fit our accepted cultural theological norms. He writes, "theology is not a universal language. It is situated language that reflects the goals, aspirations, and beliefs of a particular people, a particular community" (94). If we are to affirm the plurality that God affirms, we must thoughtfully seek out the diversity of theological voices. This was a poignant wake-up call for me as I too often only listen to the voices of those similar to me. I need to be striving to affirm God by affirming the truth of the many legitimate enculturations of the faith.

Manifold Witness is accessible, but it is also challenging. Franke goes places that others have avoided – not for the sake of controversy, but out of a deep desire to be faithful. His commitment to loving and serving God is apparent on every page of this book making his exploration of the plural nature of truth a gift to the Christian community. I highly recommend this book not just for those caught up in the discussion of truth, but to all Christians eager to celebrate our expansive God in the full diversity of his church.

At one point Moltmann, spoke about the two crosses of Christianity – the real cross at Golgotha and Constantine’s dream cross (a discussion I assume he develops further in his book, The Crucified God). The cross that appeared to Constantine in his vision was the cross of empire and violence. It was used to conquer, oppress, and destroy opposition. His cross is one of power and domination, not of response and reconciliation. But it is Constantine's cross, and not the cross of Golgotha, that the church has most readily accepted through the ages. Moltmann mentioned that it was the precursor of the Iron Cross and Victoria’s Cross – crosses that spoke not of the sacrifice of Jesus, but of empire and political maneuvering. We place that cross on flags to demonstrate the forced acceptance of a political interpretation of Christ. Accepting Christ and his cross has become about accepting the empire’s official version thereof.

Moltmann suggested instead that we need to go back to the origins of our faith to find a new future for Christianity in the world outside of imperialism. We have so confused the cross of Constantine with the real cross of Christ that we fail to understand and honor what the cross truly means. We honor our idea of a powerful, vindictive cross instead of a suffering cross. Unless we break from this idolatry, the probleofm  the Church causing pain in this world will continue.

I found the image fascinating. When the cross becomes our shield and sword instead of a symbol of hope, our faith becomes about struggle with the Other instead of love of the Other. Instead of acknowledging that through Christ’s suffering, all can be reconciled, we desire to forcibly make others think as we do. But conversion through coercion is not a reflection of hope and love, but of fear. If we cannot let the other be who they are and encounter the cross on their own terms, then we have forsaken the cross in favor of empire (be that a political or ideological empire). I fully agree that we need to return to the real cross, but I also do wonder what the future would look like apart from this need to use the cross to justify our disrespectful and inhumane treatment of others. A cross that embraced the suffering of others and helped them develop hope from that suffering instead of causing that very suffering is a vastly different sort of cross; and a church that shunned the cross of empire in favor of Jesus himself would be a very different church.