AFRICAN INDEPENDENT CHURCHES
"The Story of the African Independent Churches and Its Implications for Theology" by James O. Kombo -- begins with a few historical highlights. Notes that "the current wave of the AICs has been around since 1819." Kombo explains that "by the close of the 1950s (about 140 years since the appearance of the first AIC), these churches still had no place within the history of African Christianity. ... In the context of South Africa [in the 1960s], for example, the black Christian population in mainline churches was 52% while that of the AICs stood at 27%. By 1991, statistics had changed drastically and were 41% and 36% respectively. ... [B]y 1993 the membership of the AICs amounted to 45 million (14% of the African Christian population). ...
"[I]t is important to note that the AICs fall into different classes namely, Messianic, Ethiopian and Zionist. The Messianic AICs are the ones in trouble with orthodox Christology. They have explicitly accorded the title 'Messiah' to their leaders. ...
"African theologians would have been more helpful to the AICs, and indeed to theology in general, if the former saw their role not as looking for and grounding 'African Messiahs' but, ... searching for the equivalents of biblical titles for Jesus in local languages and demonstrating the resonance."
Kombo uses a footnote on page 171 to identify a principal handicap: "Christians in Africa have a faith but not a theology. ...
"Theology would therefore be doing a legitimate service if it sought and turned the mental and moral processes of Africa toward Christ. ... One wonders whether scholarships that ground the idea of the 'African Messiahs' are not simply buttressing the view that the AICs are essentially syncretistic and represent the flip side of genuine Christianity in Africa.
"Generally, the Ethiopian and Zionist types of AICs [which get no further description by Kombo] have not had glaring trouble with Christology, although some of them have their respective Ecclesiology built around the person of the leader. The leader, in that case, functions as a traditional African chief." Overall, only of limited value because Kombo fails to broadly describe AIC distinctives. African Journal of Evangelical Theology, 20:2 -2001, pp157-175.
CHRISTOLOGY
Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God, by Jack Miles [1] -- "At the heart of [Miles'] analysis is the premise that the Gospels describe God when he took human form and allowed himself to be murdered," says Ron Charles in this review. And while that may not seem so off track, "Miles claims that God took this suicidal step for two reasons: (1) to repent for his primal sin, his ruthless curse on Adam and Eve that brought death into the world, and (2) to escape from an embarrassing scandal, his failure to save the Jews from oppression."
Charles concludes that Miles' "insistence that Jesus is God in human form seems predetermined by his Jesuit background instead of by literary analysis. ...
"As Miles sees it, the great crisis in God's life is his inability to save the Jews from Roman genocide." Christian Science Monitor, Nov 29 '01, <http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/1129/p18s1-bogn.html>
A more biting assessment of Miles's work is found in "Jesus: The Sequel" by John Meier, professor of New Testament at Notre Dame University: "Continuing the story he began with his wildly successful 'God: A Biography,' Miles professes to be reading the Gospels from an artistic, aesthetic, literary point of view, freed of the cumbersome baggage of historical criticism and theology." What results, Miles insists, "is a literary, not a historical or theological, reading of the Bible. Therefore, it is not open to irrelevant charges of historical or doctrinal error.
"Somehow Miles thinks this literary cover will shield him from charges of Gnosticism, Patripassianism and a host of other jolly heresies in which this book revels. His clever defense notwithstanding, historical and theological observations keep rearing their ugly heads throughout his amusing and imaginative tour de force. Miles doth protest too much. He is actually doing theology from a literary and psychoanalytical perspective, with tidbits of history and anthropology tossed in to give his mulligan stew some spice and substance. ...
"In sum, this book is a perfect articulation of either postmodernism or Humpty Dumpty. The text means whatever Miles wants it to mean at any given moment." Los Angeles Times Book Review, Dec 9 '01, p4.
The Los Angeles Times also profiled Miles yesterday (Dec 9 '01, ppE1, E2). See "Confessions of God's Extreme Biographer" by Mary Rourke, <http://www.latimes.com/features/lifestyle/la-000097658dec09132046.story>
ISLAM
Islam Outside the Arab World, David Westerlund and Ingvar Svanberg, eds. [2] -- reviewer Herman Beck explains that "non-Arab Muslims constitute about 85 percent of the world population of Muslims. In spite of their numerical importance, good compendiums surveying the Muslim groups in the different regions outside the Arab world are still rare. The aim of this book is to supply this deficiency and to present Islam and its current renewal among non-Arab Muslims and its growth in non-Arab countries." NUMEN, 48:3 - 2001, pp375-376.
MONOTHEISM
One True God, by Rodney Stark [3] -- in her review Linda Giedl finds that "Stark devotes a sizeable portion of this book to discussing the 185,000 American Protestants, mostly evangelicals, who are currently conducting a highly competitive Christian mission to the world. Two things stand out about the centuries-long continent-wide missions: the long-term superficiality of much that has passed for genuine conversion, and the sheer extent and brutality of coercive missionizing."
By contrast, Giedl asks: "[w]here is any discussion of the historical evidence for the transforming power of monotheism? Why this glaring omission?" She concludes: "An open-minded examination of the entire historical record, with all its horrors and blessings, would have provided a more illuminating survey." Christian Science Monitor, Nov 29 '01, <http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/1129/p19s1-bogn.html>
TAROT CARDS
Beyond Prediction: The Tarot and Your Spirituality, by John Drane, Ross Clifford, and Philip Johnson [4] -- we haven't been this impressed by a Christian response to alternative religions in a long time. Beyond Prediction is not your typical evangelistic tool. Nor is it like most evangelistic books that double as apologetic responses to be handed to someone you believe to be in some specific form of spiritual danger.
After belief in astrology, the Tarot may be the second most widely practiced occult aspect of the New Age in our culture. The creation of a tool to communicate the gospel which speaks the language of the Tarot is therefore all the more significant.
Did you know that the illustrations on Tarot cards (the most universally identifiable element about the cards themselves) are mostly taken from the stories in the Bible? The authors grasp that fact and run with it in a most creative and winsome way. They use the Tarot to invite readers to consider the claims of Christ. Readers start off wanting to know more about the Tarot, and end up reading the Bible.
The focus of the book is the description of the individual cards. This discussion leads the reader to discover that the most important card in the deck, The Fool, represents an individual who holds the key to life in the next world, bearing gifts for those he meets, and yet is rejected and unrecognized by those on whose behalf he loses his life.
The approach of Beyond Prediction is one of describing the altar of the unknown god a'la the Apostle Paul in the Athenian Areopagus (Acts 17). And what a clever description! Drane and company don't miss a single opportunity to utilize the tools (primary Tarot sources, mythology, UFO beliefs, the Enneagram) and the celebrities of the New Age (C.G. Jung, James Redfield, Joseph Campbell, M. Scott Peck). Familiarity with cultural icons in film and print also plays a significant role in identifying with the reader.
The structure of the presentation for each card (spiritual key, general meaning, positive and negative outcomes, and intuition) follows a convention common to the practice of card reading by psychics who use them for divination purposes.
In a future edition of Beyond Prediction (and we do hope it becomes popular enough to go through several printings) the authors may wish to advise the reader that Tarot decks vary widely from one publisher to another (in both their suit names and illustrations). Consequently, some of the more specific details about certain cards described in the book may not always apply.
No doubt some will object to a lack of a clear condemnation of the occult or even a clear warning in Beyond Prediction (although such an apologetic is included in the book by Clifford and Johnson, Jesus and the Gods of the New Age [5], which was also released by the same publisher this year). Perhaps this approach isn't for everyone. Nevertheless, in an age where intolerance has become a watch-word, such well-crafted responses are much in demand.
It doesn't take a great deal of wisdom to operate as an apologist. However, it is truly impressive when apologists approach their rivals so well that they win both respect and a hearing. We would like to recognize Drane, Clifford, and Johnson for just such wisdom. May their tribe increase.
Sources, Monographs:
1 - Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God, by Jack Miles (Knopf, 2001, hardcover, 288 pages, ISBN 0-3754-0014-1)
2 - Islam Outside the Arab World, David Westerlund and Ingvar Svanberg, eds. (Palgrave, 1999, hardcover, 488 pages, ISBN 0-3122-2691-8)
3 - One True God: Historical Consequences of Monotheism, by Rodney Stark (Princeton Univ Pr, 2001, hardcover, 338 pages, ISBN 0-6910-8923-X)
4 - Beyond Prediction: The Tarot and Your Spirituality, by John Drane, Ross Clifford, and Philip Johnson (Lion, 2001, paperback, 192 pages, ISBN 0-7459-5035-3)
5 - Jesus and the Gods of the New Age, by Ross Clifford and Philip Johnson (Lion, 2001, paperback, 224 pages, ISBN 0-7459-5060-4)
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