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Editorial:
Minority Report
Anna Rankin
Comment:
Racism in Ulster: Up-front and Ugly
Ken Newell
From
the Director: Naming Our Sin
David W Porter
Faith
in Ulster: Facing Up to Diversity
Stephen Skuce
Faith
and Practice
Walter Lewis
Interview
with Rose Ozo: Where the Heart Is
Anna Rankin
Craigavon:
Religious Liberty in the Shadow of Drumcree
Small Steps
Tim Foley
Embracing the Stranger
Richard Kerr
Review:
On Eagle's Wing
Ethel White
Review:
Conflict, Controversy and Co-operation
John W Morrow
Review:
The Subversive Manifesto
John Kyle
Review:
L is for Lifestyle
Claire Martin
Review:
It Will Not Be Taken Away From Her
Cary Gibson
Review:
Prophetic Untimeliness: A Challenge to the Idol of Relevance
Paul Rankin
Review:
Two Little Boys
John Gillespie
Review:
Son
David Smith
REVIEW:
Prophetic Untimeliness: A Challenge to the Idol of Relevance
by Os Guinness
reviewed by Paul Rankin
IN 1 CORINTHIANS, Paul writes that he has “become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some” – a Jew among Jews, a Gentile among Gentiles, ... In this book, Os Guinness explores the dilemma that has faced the church ever since: how to balance the need to make the message fresh, relevant, readily understandable in new and ever-changing contexts without stripping it of its essential characteristics. Guinness’s contention is that in making being relevant its idol the modern church in the West has lost the message somewhere along the line.
This book rests heavily on a discussion of the role of time in the modern world. In the first section, Guinness shows that the clock is the source of many of the pressures and stresses of modern life and that it has colonized us to the extent that we now see the world in temporal and not spatial terms (the Barbarians were ‘uncivilized’ because they lived beyond the physical limits of ‘civilized’ Rome whereas today’s uncivilized are behind in time – they are ‘primitives’ or ‘reactionaries’). Words such as ‘progress’ or historical terms like ‘Dark Ages /Middle Ages/Modern Age’ subtly communicate to us that we, now, are the apotheosis of history. The consequence of all this, Guinness suggests, is that our modern world has rejected the past, has an inflated view of its own present, and lives ever more in the future – and at speed. And the church has chased headlong after it. With the result that we have bent over so far to be relevant that we have been wrenched from our roots; without a matching commitment to faithfulness, we have merely become like those we wish to be relevant to.
Guinness chronicles this pursuit of relevance at all costs in Section 2 (characterized by conformity to the world around us, the quest for popularity, and by fashionability/trendiness), and thus holds up a mirror to much of what we see around us today (“Evangelicals have followed the broader cultural shift from ‘religion to spirituality’ and [...] have become chronically individualistic rather than corporate; they have become ‘do-it-yourself’ in their preferences rather than living under authority” [98]).
In Section 3 he considers the pain of being faithful, suggesting that it means being constantly out of sync with prevailing trends in our churches, and proposes a framework for developing ‘resistance thinking’ which would incorporate the unfashionable and historical as well as the eternal.
Looking back, I found myself wanting Guinness to go further with the issues he raises in this book. He puts his finger on real problems, but I am not entirely convinced by his response. There is an undercurrent which implies that through faithfulness we will become relevant – yet this depends entirely on what we see ‘faithful’ to be. ‘Faithful’ is something we work out in the context of our times: today’s ‘faithful’ will not, in all probability, look like that of our parents. I would have been interested for Guinness to examine the impact the challenge of relevance has on creating a newer, renewed vision of faithfulness, with a wider remit to encompass issues such as the environment, consumerism, food, racism, rather than a narrowly ‘spiritual’ one. Otherwise, our resistance thinking may become merely counter to what we see around us, rather than a means of taking us towards an alternative vision of how things ought to be. Instead of simply swinging the pendulum away from relevance toward faithfulness I needed him to reset the balance between them, and this is lacking, except in very general terms.
That said, I liked this book, as it asks real questions about where we are and where we are headed. These are vital issues relevant to the future of church in Northern Ireland in a changing cultural context.
PAUL RANKIN is currently completing a PhD at Queen’s University Belfast in Translation Studies.
PROPHETIC UNTIMELINESS,
A challenge to the idol of relevance.
Os Guinness
Published by Baker Books, 2004.
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