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Introduction:
Identity
Derek Poole
Comment:
What's in a Name?
Janet Morris
From
the Director
David Porter
End
Game of the End Times
David Porter
We
Will Not Have Home Rule
Alywn Thomson
The
Lost Field
Tony Davidson
Divine
Assumption
Alan Wilson
Walking
the Tight Rope
William Storrar
Certificate
in Biblical Peacebuilding
Lynda Gould
Liberal
Evangelical Post-Unionism and ECONI
Esmond Birnie
O
God Our Help in Ages Past
Christopher Catherwood
Transformation
Lynda Gould
IDENTITY
Christians have a precarious belonging in the world. They are members
of a particular community with unique cultural, historical and political
experiences that have shaped its sense of identity. Christians are also
citizens of another reality - the Kingdom of God.
The New Testament describes this latter identity in transcendent and eternal terms. Christians are 'the people of God', they are 'a holy nation', they are 'citizens of the household of God', they are 'aliens and strangers in the world'. Christians are those who seek a 'city who's builder and maker is God'. Clearly the early church understood its identity from the perspective of God's claims on their lives, and they shaped their citizenship by the eternal perspective of life expressed in the risen and ascended Lord.
Although the primary identity of the first church communities was 'in Christ', paradoxically, this did not obliteration a particular ethic identity (the result of an accident of birth) but fulfilled it. By judging and affirming the values of each culture and by relativising the claims of allegiance made by every ethic group, the gospel places our cultural identity in the realm of redemption and offers us a new beginning. Christian identity is therefore incarnational. It is rooted in the time, place and people with whom we live and share our social and cultural life, but it's values and social ethics are shaped by the life of Christ.
This is our precarious identity, expressed in the Biblical wisdom that we are to be 'in the world but not of it'. And this is the challenge for Christians in a society that has idolised our nationalist ideologies and sectarianised our cultural differences. How do we affirm our particular community's identity without reinforcing a negative identity that defines itself over and against another? How do we identify with the legitimate and unique characteristics of our community yet maintain a prophetic distance that allows us to speak of God's inclusive love for all peoples?
Derek Poole - Editor
ECONI WELCOMES the submission of unsolicited articles, but does not guarantee publication, and manuscripts cannot be returned. Opinions expressed in the magazine are those of the contributors and do not necessarily reflect the views of ECONI. Permission to reprint any original article in Lion & Lamb should be sought from the Editor.
Editor
Derek Poole
Asst Editor Ruth Hutchinson
Design Colin Maguire
Cover Spring Graphics
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