Consuming Jesus

Braxton Alsop

True Community: A Holistic Gospel Witness

September 22nd, 2009

In this essay, Kelsi Johns writes with her usual simple profundity and keen eye to the blood, sweat, and tears of true discipleship. She reflects on her own experiences to draw out what it means to live the gospel rather than simply preach the gospel from a safe distance. To love is to risk, and as Kelsi explains, the church is called to show the same “messy, generous, limitless love” that God has shown to us in Christ. Community development, Kelsi asserts, must begin with developing relationships, with truly loving our neighbors and serving with and among them, rather than just to them.

True Community

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Jacques Derrida and Structural Evil

September 3rd, 2009

Is the much maligned (and praised) philosopher Jacques Derrida, father of deconstruction, a misunderstood liberator in need of a little liberation himself? In this essay, Braxton Alsop gives a sympathetic ear to Jacques Derrida as a liberation theologian in his own right, analyzing how well Derrida addresses human suffering caused by structural evil. Braxton then sets forth his own views on God, salvation, and the church, explaining how a Trinitarian perspective better addresses the shared concern for structural evil.

Jacques Derrida and Structural Evil

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About the Book

Many Americans think that race problems are a thing of the past because we no longer live under the Jim Crow laws that once sustained overt structures of segregation. Unfortunately, says Paul Louis Metzger, today we live under an updated version of segregation, through the subtle power of unchallenged norms of consumer preference.

Consumerism affects and infects the church, reinforcing race and class divisions in society. Intentionally or unintentionally, many churches have set up structures of church growth that foster segregation, such as appealing to consumer appetites. Metzger here argues that the evangelical Christian church needs to admit this fault and intentionally move away from race, class, and consumer segregation.

Challenging the consumerism that fosters ethnic and economic divisions and distorts evangelical Christianity, Consuming Jesus puts forth a theologically grounded call to restructure the church's passions and practices, transforming the evangelical imagination around a nobler, all-consuming vision of the Christian faith.

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In the wake of the transformations that took place in the last half of the last century, it was impossible for an earlier generation of evangelical intellectuals to ignore the modern world’s, indeed America’s, race problem. But rarely was the lip service paid to the problem translated into careful reflection on theology’s own culpability in forging the racial world in which we live and move and have our being, to say nothing of reimagining theology itself and church life beyond the racial world that Christianity and its theologians had such a significant hand in making. Consuming Jesus: Beyond Race and Class Divisions in a Consumer Church is the breakout book of a new generation of young evangelical intellectuals who are striving not to make the mistake of their theological-evangelical fathers. It should be read. — J. Kameron Carter - Duke Divinity School

Braxton Alsop

True Community: A Holistic Gospel Witness

Jacques Derrida and Structural Evil

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