Sidewalks in the Kingdom (The Christian Practice of Everyday Life) , livre ebook

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132 pages

English

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Christians often talk about claiming our cities for Christ and the need to address urban concerns. But according to Eric Jacobsen, this discussion has remained far too abstract. Sidewalks in the Kingdom challenges Christians to gain an informed vision for the physical layout and structure of the city.Jacobsen emphasizes the need to preserve the nourishing characteristics of traditional city life, including shared public spaces, thriving neighborhoods, and a well-supported local economy. He explains how urban settings create unexpected and natural opportunities to initiate friendship and share faith in Christ.Helpful features include a glossary, a bibliography, and a description of New Urbanism. Pastors, city-dwellers, and those interested in urban ministry and development will be encouraged by Sidewalks in the Kingdom.

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Philosophie et théologie

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Publié par	Baker Publishing Group
Date de parution	01 mai 2003
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781585583799
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0634€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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The Christian Practice of Everyday Life
David S. Cunningham and William T. Cavanaugh, series editors
This series seeks to present specifically Christian perspectives on some of the most prevalent contemporary practices of everyday life. It is intended for a broad audience including clergy, interested laypeople, and students. The books in this series are motivated by the conviction that, in the contemporary context, Christians must actively demonstrate that their allegiance to the God of Jesus Christ always takes priority over secular structures that compete for our loyalty including the state, the market, race, class, gender, and other functional idolatries. The books in this series will examine these competing allegiances as they play themselves out in particular day-to-day practices, and will provide concrete descriptions of how the Christian faith might play a more formative role in our everyday lives.
The Christian Practice of Everyday Life series is an initiative of The Ekklesia Project, an ecumenical gathering of pastors, theologians, and lay leaders committed to helping the church recall its status as the distinctive, real-world community dedicated to the priorities and practices of Jesus Christ and to the inbreaking Kingdom of God. (For more information on The Ekklesia Project, see <www.ekklesiaproject.org>.)

© 2003 by Eric O. Jacobsen
Published by Brazos Press
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.brazospress.com
Ebook edition created 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means for example, electronic, photocopy, recording without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
ISBN 978-1-58558-379-9
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
Scripture is taken from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission.
Parts of chapter 4 were previously published as “Learning to See Our Cities” in Radix 29.1 (2002): 12–15, 26.
The internet addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers in this book are accurate at the time of publication. They are provided as a resource. Baker Publishing Group does not endorse them or vouch for their content or permanence.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Acknowledgments
Foreword by Eugene J. Peterson
Introduction A Trip to Bernice’s
Part 1: Thinking about Our Cities
1. Broken Promises: Sprawl and the American Experience
2. From the Garden to Jerusalem
3. Waiting for Jerusalem
4. Learning to See Our Cities: A Theological Approach
Part 2: Markers of the City
5. Public Spaces and Incarnational Ministry
6. Mixed Use, Pedestrian Scale, and the Whole Person
7. Beauty, Quality, and Other “Nonessentials”
8. Local Economy and the Permanence of Place
9. Critical Mass and Making Friends
10. Strangers and Hospitality
Conclusion Seeking the Welfare of Your City
Appendix A: City Words A Constructive Glossary
Appendix B: City Reading
Appendix C: Charter of the New Urbanism
Notes
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my father Conrad Jacobsen for modeling a life of disciplined study and my mother Judi Jacobsen for her constant cheerleading; my father-in-law Earl Palmer for suggesting that I start writing and my mother-in-law Shirley Palmer who also risked writing out of her passion; Eugene Peterson for enduring the first draft and encouraging me the whole way; Daniel Kemmis for igniting in me a fire for citizenship; Albert Borgmann for modeling a high standard of Christian scholarship; Lynn Schreuder for giving me words for what I was seeing; Jack and Kelly Oats for being my first converts and for clipping countless articles; Peter Lambros for being up past midnight as often as I and always ready for a walk; David Cunningham and Bill Cavanaugh for seeing strong possibilities for a book; Rodney Clapp for caring about the ideas independently of the book project; the Brazos Press staff for treating me like a “real” author; the 9:30 Adult Ed class for correcting some glaring errors; the First Presbyterian Church of Missoula for some seed money to get started and the Lilly Foundation for a reason to get finished; and the great city of Missoula Montana for giving me more than I could ever give back.
And I would especially like to thank Katherine, Peter, Emma, and my beloved wife Liz, without whom I would only be a noisy gong.
Foreword
In the Christian imagination, where you live gets equal billing with what you believe. Geography and theology are biblical bedfellows. Everything that the creator God does, and therefore everything that we do, since we are his creatures and can hardly do anything in any other way, is in place. All living is local this land, this neighborhood, these trees and streets and houses, this work, these shops and markets.
This is, of course, obvious, but all the same it needs saying sometimes requiring a raised voice. I have spent an adult lifetime with the assigned task of guiding men and women into living out the Christian faith in the place in which they raise their children and work for a living, go fishing and play golf, buy their groceries and park their cars. In the course of this work, I find that cultivating a sense of place as the exclusive and irreplaceable setting for following Jesus is even more difficult than persuading men and woman of the truth of the message of Jesus. Why is it easier for me to believe in the holy (because God inspired it) truth of John 3:16 than the holy (because God made it) ground at 579 Apricot Lane where I live?
One of the seductions that continues to bedevil Christian obedience is the construction of utopias, whether in fact or fantasy, ideal places where we can live the good and blessed and righteous life without inhibition or interference. The imagining and attempted construction of utopias is an old habit of our kind. Sometimes we attempt it politically in communities, sometimes socially in communes, sometimes religiously in churches. It never comes to anything but grief. Meanwhile that place we actually are is dismissed or demeaned as inadequate for serious living to the glory of God. But utopia is literally “no-place.” We can only live our lives in actual place, not imagined or fantasized or artificially fashioned places.
A favorite story of mine, one that has held me fast to my place several times, is of Gregory of Nyssa who lived in Cappadocia (a region in modern Turkey) in the fourth century. His older brother, a bishop, arranged for him to be appointed bishop of the small and obscure and unimportant town of Nyssa ( A.D. 371) Gregory objected; he didn’t want to be stuck in such an out-of-the-way place. But his brother told him that he didn’t want Gregory to obtain distinction from his church but rather to confer distinction upon it. Gregory went to where he was placed and stayed there. His lifetime of work in that place, a backwater community, continues to be a major invigorating influence in the Christian church worldwide.
Our Scriptures that bring us the story of our salvation ground us in place. Everywhere they insist on this grounding. Everything that is critically important to us takes place on the ground. Mountains and valleys, towns and cities, regions and countries: Haran, Ur, Canaan, Hebron, Sodom, Machpelah, Bethel, Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Samaria, Tekoa, Nazareth, Capernaum, Mt. Sinai, Mt. Of Olives, Mt. Gilboah, Mt. Hermon, Ceasarea, Gath, Ashkelon, Michmash, Gibeon, Azekah, Jericho, Chorizan, Bethsaida, Emmaus, the Valley of Jezreel, the Kidron Valley, the Brook of Besor, Anathoth. Big cities and small towns. Famous landmarks and unvisited obscurities. People who want God or religion as an escape from their place because it is difficult (or maybe just mundane), don’t find this much to their liking. But there it is there’s no getting around it. But to the man or woman wanting more reality, not less, this insistence that all genuine life, life that is embraced in God’s work of salvation, is grounded, is good news indeed.
It is the passion of Eric Jacobsen to bring us into an attentive consideration of the place where we live and get us to explore the ways in which the place itself with its many dimensions is integral to the gospel in the way we live. This book is important gospel work. We are used to having natural places, our mountains and rivers, appreciated as sacred places. And we are used to having secularized and problem-ridden cities targeted as places for critical and sometimes dramatic missions. But we aren’t used to this, this pastor who sees and helps us to see these ordinary places where so many of us live as gift-places, as holy sites. If we hadn’t already noticed the enormous significance of where we are and how critical it is to live in ways that deepen and extend God’s gift of community we certainly will as we read the pages of Sidewalks in the Kingdom .
What we often consider to be the concerns of religion ideas, truths, prayers, promises, beliefs are never permitted to have a life of their own apart from particular persons and actual places. Biblical religion has a low tolerance for “great ideas” or “sublime truths” or “inspirational thoughts” apart from the places in which they occur. God’s great love and purposes for us are worked out in the messes in our kitchens and backyards, in storms and sins, blue skies, daily work, working with us as we are and not as we should be, and where we are, on “sidewalks in the kingdom,” and not where we would like to be.
Eugene J. Peterson Professor Emeritus of Spiritual Theology Regent College
Introduction A Trip to Bernice’s
But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into ex