Scattered thoughts regarding Mark Noll’s latest book.
How does the American church fit into the picture of global humanity? The goal of The New Shape of World Christianity is to speak to that question. The center of Noll’s argument is that, “American Christianity is important for the world primarily because the world is coming more and more to look like America (189).”
From there, he asserts how American churches can better participate in the universal body of Christ:
For American churches to participate in the universal body of Christ in ways that reflect the deepest realities of that body, it will be necessary to discard two false notions—both Western paternal benevolence which the instinct is to think that unless Americans do it, it will not get done, and also Western hegemonic imperialism whereby all the evils of the world are laid at the feet of American-dominated multinationals or missions agencies. Once those delusions are set aside, practices of partnership drawing on genuine Christian realities may flourish.
(hegemonic means, “the social, cultural, ideological, or economic influence exerted by a dominant group”; I looked it up).
And, he concludes with a moving biblical picture:
Immediately after describing the Light at the center, the passage moves on to the effects of God’s saving works for the world as a whole: “The nations will walk by its light and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it” (Rev 21:22-24 NRSV).
The division of divine fulfillment picks up Isaiah’s theme about the kings of the earth even as it speaks graphically about the universal outreach of the gospel. The passage also hints at the sanctification of the world’s diverse cultures. The kings—or, we might expand, the cultures of the world—with their glory will enter the heavenly city. For Americans who read this stirring account of the fulfillment to which the whole world points, it should be enough to imagine that one of those ‘kings’ will come from the White House, but only one.
This is an important book, a good book to read this summer to understand what is going on with the Gospel in the world.
