Book Reviews - Fall 2006

Philip Jenkins, The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. 193 pp. Notes, Bibliography, Index.

Jenkins has done it again. Frame a simple question, dismiss the popular answers, then blend story and statistic into a provocative account of a world beyond the border of the West. The question: If the church of the Global South continues to eclipse the church of the North, what will the dominant church believe and what will it do? The common dichotomy of fundamentalism and liberalism will not take us far in understanding the church of the Global South. If it must be used, then the Global South church is hermeneutically and theologically conservative, and thus socially and politically liberal on issues of poverty and injustice. Get used to it.

As with The Next Christendom, one can quibble with Jenkins’ criteria. For example, Jenkins identifies Isaiah Shembe as a prophet and the Shembe Church as a Christian church. Recent work however demonstrates that Shembe, in his present form, has replaced Christ as mediator, putting the church outside of Christianity (Moodley 2004).

Still, Jenkins continually hits the mark. Alternative hermeneutics and theologies push the Western church to ask: What is Christianity, and what is merely Western? The issue is not whether the church in the North or the South has got it right, but rather that reading the Bible with fresh eyes helps us see that the gospel is able to confirm and confront a variety of cultures, carry on its transforming work, and continue to do that anew and afresh for generations to come. No need to be surprised at the power of the Word.

-Michael Rynkiewich, Asbury Theological Seminary

Reference Cited

Moodley, Edley. “Shembe, Ancestors or Christ? A Missiological Inquiry into the Status and Role of Jesus Christ in the amaNazaretha Church, Kwa Zulu Natal, South Africa.” Ph.D. Diss., Asbury Theological Seminary, 2004.

Howard A. Snyder, ed. “Live While You Preach”: The Autobiography of Methodist Revivalist and Abolitionist John Wesley Redfield, 1810-1863. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2006. 412 pp.

As Nathan Hatch noted in the Democratization of American Christianity, his now classic account of the rapid spread of sectarian expressions of Christianity in the early nineteenth century, the popularity and unique character of American religion owes much of its success to its principal promoters: a cadre of self-educated, colorful and eccentric popular evangelists. Readily adopting innovative ecclesial structures, such as the camp meeting, and benefiting from the successes of perhaps America’s most eccentric popular evangelist, Lorenzo Dow, Methodism was the fastest growing and largest American denomination by 1820. As early as the 1830s, however, Methodist growth slowed, and the movement began a process of institutionalization and a search for respectability. Hatch associates this especially with Nathan Bangs, Phoebe Palmer’s New York friend and critic of her brand of perfectionism.

As “Live While You Preach” clearly demonstrates, the growing cultural conformity of American Methodism was contested by various figures as colorful as Dow himself. One of the most remarkable was John Wesley Redfield, author of this autobiography.

Redfield was a key figure of the formation of the Free Methodist Church, but his biography has much wider significance. It helps clarify the history of Methodism, revivalism in New England, the greater New York City area, the Burned-Over District of upstate New York, and in the spread of Burned-Over District style evangelicalism in such areas as the Northern Illinois communities of Elgin, Woodstock and Marengo, areas largely populated by immigrants from western New York.

As pictured in his autobiography, Redfield’s faith was both deeply experiential and radically puritanical. Redfield lived with a sense of divine immediacy in which God’s grace and judgment were experienced literally. Redfield’s faith was dismissed as fanaticism by his critics, but it lived on in a zealous band of disciples including “Auntie” Coon, the Pentecost Bands (young Free Methodists deeply committed to spiritual renewal), and into the twentieth century in Coon’s convert, E. E. Shelhamer. Uniting radical puritanical elements with feminism and commitments to racial justice, the tradition of Redfield survived in portions of Free Methodism for over a century.

This volume is enriched by the introduction and extensive footnotes. It should be in the libraries of all Free Methodists, students of the wider Methodist movement, scholars of American religious history, and anyone interested in the history of Antebellum New York and Northern Illinois.

-William Kostlevy, Tabor College

Karl Rennstich, Korruption und Religion. München: Rainer Hampp Verlag, 2005. 136 pp.

This is Karl Rennstich’s second work on the theme of corruption and religion. In 1990 he published Korruption: Eine Herausforderung für Gesellschaft und Kirche [Corruption: A Challenge for Society and Church], an examination of corruption in various parts of society, though dealing only with Christian perspectives. Korruption und Religion argues that corruption is always related in some way to power and money, is done in secret, breaks trust, and distorts the normal societal standards of duty and responsibility. The fight against corruption is the task of both church and state. Rennstich focuses on the problem of corruption in the world’s major religions. He maintains that corruption is widespread in predominantly Hindu India, even though the religion “takes a clear position against” it; the Hindu concept of moksha advocates “the liberation of the soul from all worldly and material connections.” Regarding Buddhism, Rennstich notes that the “Noble Eightfold Path” describes the ideal adherent as one who “stands over material things.” Yet corruption exists.

China, with its dominant Confucian influence, is also discussed. China has been plagued by corruption since ancient times, Rennstich notes, even though corruption was viewed as “a sign for the end of a dynasty.” Today corruption is “an immense social problem” in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, yet Singapore has curbed corruption through tough laws and even tougher enforcement.

Islam also has a complicated history with corruption, according to Rennstich. The Qur’an promises a “painful punishment” for spending money contrary to Allah’s way, and yet corruption has thrived in Muslim lands. Pious Muslim critics of corruption have often suffered persecution. Judaism too has an extensive history of struggles with corruption, as demonstrated in the Old Testament. In the New Testament, the early church had to confront cases such as Ananias and Sapphira and Simon the magician.

Rennstich discusses global corruption and the need for a global religious ethic. Following the lead of Hans Küng, he argues that civic and religious freedom are inseparable. The modern ideology of economic progress at all costs is a chief reason for the current pervasiveness of corruption. Rennstich stresses the connection between corruption and environmental destruction.

Rennstich relies heavily on Wilhelm Brunner, director of the University of Vienna business school, in his further analysis. He notes the interrelationships between power and corruption, wisdom and love. Power leads to corruption; wisdom and love lead to one another. Corruption is not unavoidable, Rennstich believes; he cites historical examples, including the “Wesleyan Methodists,” where corruption has been successfully resisted. Fighting corruption “must begin in the house of religions.” The first step is probity or complete and confirmed integrity, followed by honesty and justice.

Rennstich’s survey of corruption in the various religions is informative but sometimes incomplete. In discussing Buddhism he does not document cases of corruption but merely explains Buddhist teachings. The discussion of Confucianism is long on examples but short on insights into its teachings. Still, the insight that corruption is simultaneously condemned yet present in all of the world’s religions is helpful.

This is a fine scholarly work, well nuanced and not sectarian or ideological. It provides useful insights and concrete steps toward overcoming the forces of corruption.

-Mark Russell, Asbury Theological Seminary