Considering the practice of the Jesus way

In the latest issue of Perspectives, I was interested to run across a review of a recent book called Jesus Brand Spirituality: He Wants His Religion Back. With a title like that, I would have expected “just another critique of the shallowness of evangelical certitudes or the meanness of some of the Religious Right or yet another call to be open and in conversation as we emerge into new ideas”; according to the glowing review by Byron Borger of Hearts & Minds Books, however, it’s nothing of the sort. In fact, the book’s author, Ken Wilson, isn’t a liberal at all, but rather a Vineyard pastor, and according to Borgan,

Wilson has written a thoughtful, mature, and deeply engaging study of the ways in which we can approach Jesus, how to make sense of life in light of his ways. It talks about how the best of four streams within Christianity can unite to help create a passionate, faithful and yet grace-filled, life-giving spirituality. (Wilson’s four dimensions, by the way, are the active, the contemplative, the biblical, and the communal.) . . .

Jesus Brand Spirituality is ideal for mainline Protestants who want to make sure their liberal theology doesn’t go off the tracks, who want to stay close to Jesus and the earliest biblical truths, even if they are not quite where more traditionalist conservatives stand. It is equally helpful for anyone committed to historic Christian orthodoxy but who may sense that the recent cultural conflict, dogmatism, moralism, and overlays of the evangelical subculture may have obscured some of the clearest elements of the faith. And—please don’t miss this—it is also a fabulous read for anyone who is a skeptic or seeker; at times, it seems like it is written precisely for those who just are willing to get “one step closer to knowing.” . . .

No matter where you are on your spiritual journey, or with which denomination or tradition you stand, I am confident this book will challenge, stretch, inspire, and bless you.

That sounds promising. Interestingly, it fits in quite well with the other review in this issue, by David Smith, of Craig Dykstra’s Growing in the Life of Faith: Education and Christian Practices.In that review, Smith writes,

“Practices” is, in this context, a pregnant term, used in a way that reaches beyond its everyday meaning. Dykstra’s usage draws upon the widely discussed account of social practices found in the writings of Alasdair MacIntyre (particularly in After Virtue). Roughly speaking, for MacIntyre a practice involves a complex and coherent social activity pursued with other people because of goods that inhere in the activity itself—like playing a sport for the satisfaction of a well matched game rather than with the aim of getting one’s name in the paper. Such practices have their own standards of excellence to which the practitioner must submit, and they provide a matrix within which our own pursuit—and perception—of excellence can evolve. Such matrices, MacIntyre argues, are where virtue grows: not through having moral rules explained, but through submitting to the discipline of socially established practices. . . .

What if being and growing as a Christian is not well characterized in terms, say, of assent to doctrines but requires a pattern of Christian practices within which Christian beliefs are at home? What if faith development has as much to do with being enfolded in and submitting to such practices as hospitality to the stranger, worship, community, forgiveness, healing, and testimony as with grasping increasingly complex articulations of doctrine?

This, too, I think is a book I want to read, and in part for the same reason: to consider how Christian belief and Christian practice are interwoven, neither making sense without the other—indeed, neither truly existing without the other. Christian belief is belief which is lived out, and Christian practice is an expression of belief—they aren’t separable; and at their core, they’re all about becoming, living, walking, being, like Jesus, living life in his footsteps.