Beyond our Tribal Gods
Hillmand, Eugene
We are all pagans becoming Christians BEYOND ODB TBIBAL GODS: THE MATURING OF FAITH Ronald Marstin Orbis, $5.95 paper, 150 pp. Eugene Hillmcm When ronald marstin was a doctoral candidate...
...This is liberation theology speaking directly to the advantaged...
...faiths to justify, for insiders and outsiders alike, the barriers that keep them apart.'' Against these local deities Christian monotheism is threatening...
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...JOHN DEEDY, former managing editor of Commonweal, is a free-lance writer living in Massachusetts...
...Different perspectives,' ' as Marstin says,' 'yield quite different imperatives...
...With uncommon clarity and the vigor of a prophet, Marstin compels us to face the global implications of our Christian faith...
...Called to this witness, we are expected to go out from the secure valley in which our personal selves have been nurtured and identified with our own community of origin...
...As our vision and our concerns broaden, we begin to resemble the followers of a universal God whose love embraces every tribe and tongue and people and nation and class and color and rank...
...Classified payable with order...
...This is why, in the name of various local gods, high priests sometimes become assassins, prophets are stoned and heretics burned...
...or as a pilgrimage together wit...
...In a world dotted with islands of the privileged in a sea of refugees and outcasts," says Marstin, "there are as many faiths as there are peoples: faiths to fortify the strong and pacify the weak...
...minority...
...Whose interests do we consult when we make our decisions...
...But the more common forms of this idolatry in America are less dramatic: e.g., when a suburban pastor tacitly approves a plan to keep the neighborhood white...
...Eugene Hillmcm When ronald marstin was a doctoral candidate at Harvard I heard him lecture eloquently on the themes contained in this book, a popularization of his dissertation on the way faith matures, or should mature, in the lives of Christians...
...A universalist faith," in Margin's words, "matures only as the faithful come credibly to identify with the peoples of the whole world...
...In our hopeful safari outward we are all pagans trying to become Christians...
...the poor majority out in the real world Commonweal: 62...
...then we spend a lifetime becoming Christians through a process of maturing in faith...
...He is the author of Comparative Ejthics in Hindu and Buddhist Traditions...
...It is not really a matter of falling into it, but of coming out of it...
...what we are able and willing to do, is largely determined by where we stand and by the company we keep...
...This makes it possible for the favored ones to tolerate, and even legitimate, all kinds of injustices suffered by the others...
...Then, of course, we also become vulnerable, as Jesus was, to the defensive aggression of those among our own people who feel 1 February 1980: 61 threatened by the revolutionary implications of such a witness...
...The Inquisitores Generates of the Holy Office (now the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) were not malicious, just blind, when they taught officially in 1866 that Christians may continue to engage in the African slave trade, provided only that they refrain from dealing in slaves who have been stolen from their rightful owners, because "it is wrong to buy property taken by theft...
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...father EUGENE HILLMAN, C.S.Sp., is a research associate at the University of Nairobi...
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...He convinced me then that Christianity has been badly used, as though it were a tribal religion, in the service of those who are advantaged by the present world order through which the rich are further enriched while the poor are reduced to destitution, starvation, and death...
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...It can unify, sustain and comfort a whole people...
...But it can also turn a community inward upon itself...
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...What we see, hence Classified RATES: 70c a word, one time...
...This happens conspicuously when military chaplains bless machines of death while bishops mouth pagan slogans to encourage the troops...
...The God of biblical revelation is a universalist who loves the outsiders no less than he loves those who think they are on the inside...
...As Marstin explains it: "Theology done by the privileged responds to the questions they are near enough to hear and feel...
...Married Priests CORPUS-National Association Resigned/Married Priests...
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...It tends to define humanity in terms of the insiders and the outsiders, the chosen and the others, those who matter and those who do not...
...or when a Catholic school accepts only token blacks, if any at all...
...it is a scandal to some and good news to others, as it puts down the mighty and exalts the lowly...
...RODERICK HINDERY teaches in the religion department at Temple University...
...It is not only in Africa that tribal gods' are honored, sometimes even under a Christian label...
...What it all comes down to finally is the meaning of Christian holiness: whether we see it as an interior journey concerned with a spiritualized poverty appropriate to the needs of the affluent REVIEWERS MERLE LONGWOOD is associate professor of religious studies at Siena College in Loudonville, New York...
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...His Gospel is a surprise to both the rich and the poor...
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...go out to the lands beyond where we will find the rest of God's people and our true home among the nations...
...Jesus comes explicitly for the sake of those who are despised as sinners, beggars, prisoners, orphans, etc...
...This is why Yves Congar could ask rhetorically whether theologians, with a few rare exceptions, have ever done anything but rationalize the status quo...
...We are first socialized into the local culture religion of our own tribe or people or nation or class...
...How is it possible for pious Christians to fall into such idolatrous behavior...
...it is rather due to the limited vision we have because of our historical location in the socio-economic hierarchy, or our particular place on the pyramid of power, or our vested interest in the status quo...
...All ages, experience unnecessary...
...nor does he respect any neat boundaries of race, color, class, education, wealth, rank, or whatever...
...Christianity is revolutionary...
...His recently completed study of mission work among African nomads will be published by Orbis Books...
...monthly in advance for more than three times...
...Every page is a fresh question raised against the cozy arrangements which sustain and comfort us while ignoring the plight of the vast majority who are beyond the pale...
...As a missionary in Africa I learned something about faith in a tribal god...
...So our obtuseness need not be attributed to a special wickedness in the hearts of the advantaged...
Vol. 107 • February 1980 • No. 2
