Missions Resources - Bibliography
A Theology as Big as the City
Authors: Bakke, Ray
ISBN: 0-8308-1890-1
Publisher: Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1997
Type of cover: Soft Cover
Summary:
The Spiritual Significance of Place
A Theology as Big as the City reviewed by Paul Grant
see this book on the publisher's website
Spiderman is a myth located in a real city. While Superman continually saved "Metropolis" from evil, and Batman made his home in "Gotham", Spidey hangs out in New York City. The difference is important. The other two cities are obviously New York; Gotham is even a nickname for NYC. But the mythmakers for Superman and Batman intentionally shifted their stories into the realm of "everywhere" or "anywhere". Spiderman, on the other hand, is anchored to a place.
The fanciful New York of Spiderman versus the fake, alternate New York of Batman: one is limited by the affairs of his city; the other exists outside of space and time. Spiderman serves the city because he belongs to the city, while Batman serves the city out of some esoteric sense of altruism. Which of the two would you rather come to your rescue if a super villain attacked? In the end, blood is thicker than ideology. The church is strongest when it is about the blood of family (Jesus' family), and it is weakest when it becomes a set of abstract ideas.
Cities are more than the sum of their parts. Take away the people, and you've still got an identifiable infrastructure. And a huge residential gathering of people without material infrastructure is either a tent city or a refugee camp; either way the social environment functions like a city. Government, finance, natural environment, economy, culture and demographics are all inseparable from a city's essence.
But in American evangelical Christianity, we've created a spirituality that is timeless, placeless and (so we imagine) culture-free. In the process we've become increasingly impotent to change the world in the here-and-now. We go to great lengths re-creating the first century church, even restoring such elements as justice, sacrificial giving, stern teaching on sin, and community that have slipped through the cracks of contemporary spirituality.
Regional distinctiveness is rapidly disappearing in the industrialized world. Just like ecosystems, the irreplaceable value of which only became known as they began to disappear, so human ecology never mattered to us until it started getting sick.
Ray Bakke's book A Theology as Big as the City is an attempt to start a conversation within the evangelical world on the spiritual significance of place, or rooted-ness in a time and place, belonging in a community. The book's title is a little misleading. It's not really an urban theology, because Bakke's most important observations apply to villages and rural districts as well as cities. In seeking to apply the core teachings of the Bible to today's urban contexts, Bakke may be guilty of poetic license with his scripture texts, although he never changes the gospel. So while he reads "city" into bible passages where it's a bit of a reach, he doesn't try to apply descriptions of heaven to how we should manage our affairs today.
The phrase "place" only appears in one chapter, but should be the central theme, because everything Bakke's saying about cities becomes compelling if the focus is lifted from city to "place" in general. The big city Bakke is talking about is quantitatively different than small cities or towns, but not qualitatively different. People don't cease being people, and all the other ingredients - immigration, injustice, ecological alienation, immorality, love, laughter, kinship, innovation and art - are present wherever people gather. All the bible passages Bakke applies to cities apply equally to all human communities. Cities, in this perspective are amplifiers of humanity, but not transmogrifiers.
But Bakke is not creating sociology. He's creating a theology. That is, he's trying to discern what God and the Church mean in an urban context. He's at his strongest when he expounds from the Bible eternal teachings about how we're to be salt and light where we live. The bible is absolutely relevant - stunningly relevant - in a world so alienated that community means nothing more than units of friends. The Gospel is good news, Bakke says, not good advice. It is the coming of God's reign into a fractured disaster, called society. A Theology of the City is recommended for everyone, regardless of their interest in urban affairs. This book is the beginning of a conversation on restoration of a deeper kind of well-being and wholeness to our human communities - a conversation becoming more important every year.
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