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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 St Francis Magazine is a publication of Interserve and Arab Vision 492
St Francis Magazine Vol 8, No 4 | August 2012 2009) and early church history (Smither 2009) are also informing these debates. Eighth and, again, related to what has gone before, there is a need for more thinking about mosques per se and other settings within Muslim lived experience. Parshall’s claim that “the mosque is pregnant with Islamic theology” (Parshall 1998b: 409) remains remarkably unexamined in any detail within the literature reviewed here (cf., similarly, the charge made by Smith 2009: 37). Brother Yusuf (in Corwin et al. 2007: 8-9) and n.n. (2010a: 407) provide examples of some initial considerations of what functions the mosque serves, and the pragmatics and ambiguities that it both enables and constrains. These considerations will in turn variously inform and position notions of sincere and insincere questioning (cf. n.n. 2010b, who does not consider location as a factor within such considerations). Ridgway’s comments regarding Buddhist temples in Gill (2009: 185) point to the richness of such lived experience, although with reservations about the degree of distinction of the physical and spiritual planes of existence. In each particular setting, a mosque performs a variety of roles and provides a number of constructed (and, possibly, contested and/or conflicting) significances. It functions as a relational hub in different ways, influenced by factors such as age, proximity and gender. Taking up the influence of gender, sustained consideration of the lived experience of MBB women has only recently started to appear in the literature (McNeal 2007, 2008, 2010a, 2010b; Smythe 2010; S. Kim 2010; Lee 2010), and needs stronger connection with issues surrounding C5 and insider movements. As such, there is need for variegated strategies of subversive fulfilment, and for a much richer consideration of the poetics and politics of such places than those that are evident in the existing literature both for and against C5. 32 Where, when and why (and how) should gendered 32 This will, in turn, feed from and into subversive exegesis of scripture. See, e.g., the suggestive readings of Acts 17 by Godawa (2007) noting, however, the limited explicit and developed connection with a missiological base for such subversive strategies. St Francis Magazine is a publication of Interserve and Arab Vision 493
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