Pahl, Jon. Grand
Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2003. 286 pp. $19.99 (USD). ISBN:
1-58743-045-2.
[1] This critical work, in two parts, explores a process of “Salvation
by Grace through Place” (259). The author analyzes the
sacred as revealed in place and object as presented in contemporary
life in the U.S., and then the traditions of the Jewish and Christian
scriptures. Part one (“Discovering God”) examines
the fashion system, concepts of “place,” the shopping
mall, Walt Disney World, the suburban household, and affordable
housing. Part two (“God’s Clothing”) reviews
the biblical iconography of living waters, light, rock, vine, body
and cities.
[2] Jon Pahl, an associate professor of theology and American religious
history at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, has
written a helpful and honest analysis of contemporary American civil
religion, along with a critique of it based on orthodox Christian
biblical exposition. Pahl takes as his central thesis the
contention that both his contemporary countrymen and the scriptural
authors within the Jewish and Christian traditions share an instinct
to locate senses of the sacred within physical space and object. The
contrasting of the titular “Sacred Spaces” from these
two vantage points provides both a useful guide to the topography
of the spiritual in our own places of work, play, and worship, and
a useful initial bag of tools for the task of Christian missiology.
[3] Pahl ranges widely in his working definitions of space and place. In
his opening chapter (“Does God Wear Clothes?”) he sets
out an epistemology with which any authentically Christian theology
must engage. That is to say, he wrestles with the fundamental
conceptual divide between those who would hold that the spiritual
can, by definition, only pertain to that which is not physical (or,
at least, supra-physical) and those who try to make sense of the
central Christian conviction about the Incarnation, of God made
flesh in the revelation of Jesus Christ. He places himself
wholeheartedly on the side of incarnational epistemology while usefully
reviewing the dangers of literalising the metaphors with which we
clothe God, appealing to figures as diverse as Martin Luther, Sallie
McFague and Lawrence Langer to mark out some of the necessary boundaries
to such God-talk.
[4] A great strength of this book is its balance of the general
and particular, or applied, argument. Pahl is fluent in his
discussion of such large cultural and anthropological topics as
the religious dimensions of our experiences within a market economy,
yet his contentions are expressed in an accessible style, using
case studies of shopping malls such as the Mall of America near
Minneapolis, MN. As such, this text could prove useful
for undergraduate students in cultural studies (or even conscientious
economists; Pahl’s citing of detailed statistics underscoring
Americans’ approach to–even reverence for–the
suburban, domestic household is fascinating, and he even dares to
call American tidiness demonic!).
[5] In calling together a composite picture of biblical metaphors
for God and God’s agency, calling to mind water, light, rock,
vine, body and city, Pahl does work which has been done by many
others. Here, though, it is done in order to shed critical
light on practices and patterns of seeing and living which many
Christian readers will have regarded, theretofore, as innocuous
or unremarkable. In helping Christians to ask questions such
as “What would a healthy, Godly city or neighbourhood look
like?” Pahl is urging those in the community of faith not
to be content simply to leave civic and communitarian questions
to be resolved by others.
[6] Writing this review from the U.K., I am aware that there is
much that is recognizable as broadly parallel in British and American
cultures, especially touching on the violence of banality and the
crisis of affordable housing. Certainly, I have felt emboldened
by Pahl’s very positive and assertive conclusions to the chapters
of part two of the book to recognize the need for Christians in
my own neck of the woods to contribute to the needed discussions
around the development of good, healthy places in which our whole
community can live and flourish.
[7] Whether for undergraduate students of theology, cultural studies,
or land management, this text would serve well. It might even
be manageable as a resource for a series of studies for intelligent
readers within a church study group. For all of the above-mentioned
reasons–and not least for its studied avoidance of talking
about the ecclesiastical building as a locus for the sacred space!–I
applaud both the direction and the considerable achievements of
this important book.
Paul K. Trathen
United Kingdom
Paul.trathen@btopenworld.com
