A JESUS WHO BITES No More Mr Nice Guy: a New look at Jesus, and The F-word: a Resource Guide to Fundamentalism, SCM (186 St Paul’s Road, Balsall Heath, Birmingham B12 8LZ) £3 plus 50p p&p.
What on earth can we make of Jesus, a full two thousand years on from his birth? What can young people in particular make of him? Well, say Caroline Bailey and Martin Davies, joint editors of these two attractive magazine-format books for students, for a start ‘‘the sugar-coated Jesus has to go’’. There is no place in the harsh world of the twentieth century, and on the threshold of the third ‘‘Christian’’ millenium, for ‘‘Jesus as universal Mr Nice Guy’’, an image ‘‘as familiar and comforting as a shabby teddy bear, and as much use’’. So No More Mr Nice Guy invites us to think again and afresh about Jesus, ‘‘to shed our sentimental imagery”’ in favour of ‘‘a Jesus who bites’.
A range of biting Jesuses are presented for our consideration. There is Jesus the man-made Messiah, no stranger to those who see all religion as a human creation.
There is the Angry Young Jesus, the radical activist, mad, bad and dangerous to know. There is the genderless Jesus, the ‘‘peace ‘n’ love’’ Jesus of Rastaman, the sexy Jesus, straight or gay, of modern cinema - a Jesus for all seasons. Every Jesus except the saccharine Jesus of my Sunday school days.
Ian Harvey-Pittaway kicks off, reminding his readers that Jesus is woven into the warp of Western history. *‘Images of Jesus, moulded by Western culture, have been and still are incredibly potent’’ in our civilisation. *‘Jesus, as an icon, an inspiration or a weapon, has been used to build lives and to destroy them, to empower and to disempower, to liberate and to enslave’’. Why so many Jesuses? ‘‘We have a plurality of images because we, humanity, are many’’, and our different perceptions of Jesus are ‘‘necessarily thoroughly cultural and contextual’’. It follows that ‘‘the only Jesus an historian or theologian can ever hope to reach is a Jesus of stories, told in a variety of ways, and reflecting what he meant... ‘Pure’, ‘objective’, ‘factual’ history is an illusion: we always tell our stories from a point of view’’.
So do we simply create a Jesus who suits, ‘“‘a mere cipher for self-interest’? or ‘a symbol which stands for ourselves as we already are’’? Only if we ignore the heart of the stories. ‘‘The Gospels are stories of a man who was subversive towards current ideas about God; who undermined the social, political and religious status quo, who...named systematic and systemic injustice wherever he saw it and raged in the streets against government and religious hypocrisy. He took sides with the outcasts and the dismissed, the untouchables and the social scapegoats’’.
This, the Jesus of the stories, is the only Jesus we have - and an uncomfortably challenging Jesus he is too. The search for the historical Jesus, for what he was “‘really like’, is fruitless. ‘‘We have no rock-solid certainties, nothing we can pin down and prove irrefutably. But then, any story by which we can live is never ‘true’ because of ‘proof’. Any truth there is is in the living the story inspires. We have only the faith by which we live, an ongoing conversation between past, present and a potential future; a continuous interaction with the stories of this mysterious and profoundy challenging figure: Jesus the man-made Messiah.”’ For John Vincent, Jesus is not someone to be believed in with heart or head but someone to be followed with the feet. This involves learning from the bottom: ‘‘Jesus’ radicalism is not effete individualism, but standing beside the poor long enough to learn from them and change the world with them’. The journey is ‘“‘to discover the Gospel from and through the poor’’. Having the right intellectual ideas about Jesus, or offering him emotional rounds of applause from the sidelines, doesn’t add up to much. What counts is getting stuck in with him, working alongside the poor and underprivileged in a disciple group - and ‘‘most churches are not disciple groups’’. (John Vincent’s is the Ashram community).
Chris Cole was inspired by ‘‘Jesus the outlaw’’, and by Isaiah’s vision of a world in which men would “‘beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks.”” He broke into a Hertfordshire arms factory with a hammer and set about hammering the nose cones of missiles and military aircraft into ploughshares [LeaTHoLIC _]} | | "WILL THE REAL JESUS CHRIST PLEASE ASCEND...
From No More Mr Nice Guy ‘Bosnian Christa’, a sketch of a mixed textiles stitched panel by Margaret Argyle (Passiontide 1993), reproduced in ‘No More Mr Nice Guy’. The work is a response to the rapes of thousands of Bosnian women. A colour reproduction postcard is available (2 for £1 inc p&p) from Theology in Stitches, 425 Lower Broughton Road, Salford M7 9EX (tel 061 792 8723) and pruning hooks. He was sentenced to eight months in jail. ‘‘I was trying in a small way to echo the words and actions of Jesus; that it is better to save life than follow the law.’” The Ploughshares movement to which he belongs is dedicated to using non-violent action to disarm weapons of war. Nothing ‘‘meck and mild’’, then, about Chris Coles’ Jesus.
And nothing effete and sexless about novelist Michele Roberts’ Jesus, seen from Mary Magdalene’s point of view: “‘When we slept, it was only fitfully. The night was hot, and our close embrace as we slept made our flesh sticky, and I was constantly awoken by dreams. Each time I stirred, Jesus woke too, greeting me with delight and hugging me and listening to my story of my dream...’” An excellent resources section in the book provides practical ideas for workshops, discussions and worship ideas. There is a ‘‘Jesus Quiz’’ with questions ranging from ‘‘What was Jesus’ religion?’’ to ‘‘Does Jesus appear in Monty Python’s Life of Brian?’’ Discussion points include whether Jesus could be fully human if he wasn’t sexually active, and consideration of the ‘‘female Jesus’’.
Finally, there are the striking illustrations of Jesusimages, ranging from a haloed, lamb-clutching example of 19th century piety to Orozoco’s terrifying 20th century “‘Christ on the Cross’’, and a group of female Christas, including the Bosnian Christa I have lifted for our cover.
Almost as stimulating is SCM’s companion book in the same format, The F-word, which examines the attractions and dangers of the varieties of fundamentalism on offer to the unwary. Christian fundamentalism is defined as the belief that the Bible is ‘‘wholly, exclusively and infallibly true’, and the main body of the book is devoted to the stories of six young people and their encounters with this seductive but inadequate form of religious expression, particularly as preached in the ‘‘Christian Unions’’ to be found on every college campus.
The strength of this survey is the frank recognition that many, particularly lonely, confused students, are attracted to groups which offer a warm welcome, simple certainties and straight answers. ‘‘One thing that really appeals to me,’” says one student, ‘‘is the way fundamentalism cuts through the waffle and apparent weakness of faith that too often accompanies liberal Christianity. They are clear in what they believe.”’ But Bishop John Spong, as quoted, is no less clear: ‘‘The day has passed for me when in the name of tolerance to the religious insecurities of others I will allow my Christ to be defined inside a killing literalism... The time has come for the church to recognise certainty as a vice and to dismiss it and to embrace uncertainty as a virtue. The time has come for the church to surender its neurotic pattern of trafficking in one feeble religious security system after another and to allow its people to feel the bracing wind of insecurity so that Christians might understand what it is to walk by faith. What the institutional church needs to recognise is that for every literalising fundamentalist or traditionalist there is the counterpoint of those who have simply chosen to walk away from the life of the church where the literalised message has just become too unbelievable to be embraced. One cannot defend the faith of the past unless that faith is open to change, open to growth and open to new meaning’’.
SCM is to be congratulated for its skill and flair in producing two such lively publications, which have much to teach us as we too seek to explore and promote a non-literalist, open approach to issues of faith and reason. - DAVID BOULTON A MULTI-FAITH COUNTRY?