A meditation on religion and art first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 by the broadcast journalist, producer, artist and theological commentator Ted Harrison.
societies are built on the rubble of the past, using the examples of Rome, Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon, and the image of the Temple in the Gospels. The last three essays on racial theory also take us, and the Bible, to the heart of the contemporary USA. Despite all my criticisms, there is much to be learned from this volume as an introduction to an important field of studies relating to the Bible. But it does illustrate how much has changed in the last 20 or 30 years – or perhaps how little we have really learned.
in the world. His sermons show a profound knowledge of the Pauline writings, but at the heart of his preaching is an eschatology based on the Book of Revelation. The Church, he teaches, is not in the business of defending itself but ‘has a mission to let the world know who the church is’ (p. 202), and suffering and martyrdom are inevitable as the Church follows the way of the cross. It is a clear and hard lesson to the more established Churches of the West as they obsess over the word ‘mission’ without actually seeming to know what it implies or even means. Wang’s life and work are governed by ‘faithful disobedience’, a faithfulness that believes without doubt in God’s supreme plan of salvation and that God’s kingdom will prevail. The book contains writings by other prominent voices in the house church movement in China – Jin Tianming, Jin Mingri, Li Yingqiang and others. As I have suggested, their theology I find difficult to engage with in many of its basic principles: for example, that ‘the Bible is God’s complete and inerrant revelation . . .This absolute authority cannot be weakened by any means’ (p. 31). Yet the examples shown here of the Christian life under conditions of persecution are utterly inspiring, leaving me perplexed, profoundly humbled and yet hopeful in a manner that I had almost forgotten in the tepid atmosphere of my own church at home.
