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St Francis Magazine Vol 8, No 4 | August 2012
by Travis and Travis (2005: 407). Higgins (in Corwin et al. 2007:
10) hints at such an approach when noting how the Psalms utilise
non-Jewish forms and concepts and ‘Yahweh-ise’ them, but sees it as
a work external to the canon and the church.
What, though, if subversive fulfilment is kept within the church –
indeed, what if it is seen as an inherent and unavoidable aspect of
being church, at least as church is understood in any localised,
earthly sense The result will ‘provincialise’ churches, to adopt
Chakrabarty’s postcolonial reading of ‘Europe’ (here meaning the
categories and concepts of political modernity), such that “[n]o
concrete example of an abstract can claim to be an embodiment of
the abstract alone.” (Chakrabarty 2007: xii) Two qualifiers are required.
First, the church of Jesus Christ is an embodied heavenly
and earthly reality, not an abstract concept, albeit with its locus at
this present time around its heavenly Lord. Second, the word
‘alone’ in the above quotation has to do a dual work, referring both
to the mixed nature of any church as it continually struggles with
its own local idolatrous syncretism prior to the eschaton and to the
need for every group of believers to relate in a real manner with
other believers – all other believers – and not to see themselves as
self-contained. Both Corwin (2007: 54-55) and Waterman (2007:
59) question rightly the sufficiency of expecting new believers simply
to figure out Christian discipleship and maturity for themselves.
This challenges churches across the C-spectrum and in any setting,
Muslim or otherwise, to seek subversive fulfilment in and of its own
locality. Such strategies would fit better with the NT primary emphasis
on believers’ identity in Christ, with ‘insider’ language reserved
for this status, and notions (plural) of extraction seen primarily
in that light (Flint 2010b: 904-906). Churches – plural – together
as well as alone are called to exhibit a catholicity, albeit a heavenly
catholicity. There are encouraging signs of plural and reflexive
perspectives entering C5 debates, developments from the wider
churches which will enhance and advance insight beyond stagnant
binary oppositions (e.g. Hoefer 2009; Diaz 2010). Other binarybreaking
advances from realms such as glocalisation (Andrews
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