Rodney Clapp. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2000. 224 pp. $16.99
US. ISBN: 1587430037.
[1] Rodney Clapp writes from a distinct cognitive position, a representative
of a slim but stimulating group of post-modern evangelical Christians
(including Brian McLaren, Robert Webber, and Stanley Hauerwas). Clapp
works as an editor for Brazos Press, and so has been central to making
these perspectives accessible and visible. Clapp's Border Crossings
collects essays written for a variety of (largely religious) venues,
on a dizzying array of topics from Colin Campbell to Winnie-the-Pooh.
[2] A book like Border Crossings deserves to be engaged. As
a Lesbian-Feminist, Marxist-Humanist, musician, philosophical immanentalist,
and apostate Christian, I am both the perfect and unintended reader
for this collection. So while this journal's readers will be interested
in the specifics of how Clapp reads the X-Files and Hank Williams,
his interpretations unfold best when his philosophic assumptions are
understood.
[3] Clapp's melange of philosophical and theological arguments challenge
his own community and secularists alike. Dispensing with foundationalism,
liberalism, and individualism via standard post-modern arguments,
he reaches the conclusion that the old critique of Christianity -
focused on the "scandal of particularity" - no longer prevails
(12). Instead, all theology consists of "storied truths"
(32, 33f extends this argument in the context of Tom T. Hall and country
music's narrative impulse). Following John Howard Yoder, he asserts
that credibility is connected to refusability and vulnerability of
the message and messengers; admitting "that our argument is contestable"
allows evangelicals to speak unapologetically (31-32). Furthermore,
this particularity has a divine source: "the God Christians worship
is a God who does not shun history and contingency" (38).
[4] Clapp embraces embodiment and human community as central to Christian
theology, resulting in an ecclesiocentric emphasis. The chapter "Tacit
Holiness" (63-74), drawing on Hauerwas and Polyani, turns toward
habitual involvement in worship, functioning as an apologetic for
ritual. His critical analysis of religious freedom in the United States,
which he sees as an edifice of liberalism, begins from an assumption
of communal practice which (perhaps antithetically, perhaps not) could
be adopted by others (like Native Americans) frustrated by the cosmological
blockheadedness of the courts: "Liberal religious freedom is
freedom of the alleged autonomous individual (not the church); it
is freedom of the individual to hold religious convictions as private
opinions" (46).
[5] One of the most entertaining chapters in the book recounts Clapp's
experience of the 1988 American Academy of Religion national meeting.
His keen eye uncovers the incongruities of the meeting: "the
snack bars bustle with men who now eat hot dogs, squeezing mustard
into their beards, and in half an hour will argue about Whitehead's
epistemology" (56). Describing a feminist session in which Naomi
Goldenberg spoke, he appreciates her intellectual ability "to
strew gleaming insights indiscriminately, like a gardener sowing cheap
seed." But he is then disappointed with her rejection of the
transcendent God (60).
[6] Thus we reach the philosophic problem at the nub of Clapp's exuberant
reflections. His embrace of particularity, his pride in Christianity's
narrative specificity, has not mitigated the universalist impulse
inherent in its eschatological claims. This merely hides beneath a
velvet glove of affability. While hoping evangelicals might "move
from ... absolute certainty to humble confidence" (32), the humility
does not include his deity. Essentially, he maintains a telos while
arguing against foundationalism, holds to universalism while lauding
particularity.
[7] Far be it from a Marxist to fault someone for retaining telos
... but don't claim to have achieved post-modernity! It is not surprising
that this contradiction bites Clapp in the heels when he takes up
the question of sexuality. While he refrains from any explicit pro-
or anti-gay statements, he endorses marital monogamy in the chapter
"From Family Values to Family Virtues" (110-125). Using
MacIntyre, he intelligently critiques his co-religionists for the
ahistoricity of "family values" rhetoric. With a flourish
echoing 1970s feminist rhetoric, he savages the bourgeois pretensions
of romantic love as a false naturalism (118-120). He champions the
particularity of Christian married monogamy as an alternative, which
would be fine if it was one option among many, but this is clearly
not the case. In a classic Christian move, which, despite his claims
for embodiment, displaces sexuality once again, he writes "Christians
do not get married because monogamy is an aphrodisiac; they get married
because this is the key way they participate as sexual beings in an
adventure far surpassing the potentials of any aphrodisiac, the adventure
of witnessing to and building up God's kingdom on earth" (124).
Sexuality implicitly threatens totalizing worldviews, because it basks
in the immediacy of the moment. Thus, universalizing cosmologies assert
that sexuality carries no value in and of itself - it must be always
pointing elsewhere, away from the intimate into some ever-receding
ultimate. (I am reminded of a lukewarm apologetic from a Maoist group
for their murderous homophobia, when they said that sex after the
revolution would not bear any relation to sex as we know it).
[8] Still, Clapp is a smart writer and broad reader, gleefully in
tune with the pulse and contradictions of popular culture. He takes
on the culture of holidays (75-82), shopping malls (164-168), and
in what may be the most complex chapter, launches a strong critique
of, and alternatives to, consumerism (126-156). While he condemns
contemporary capitalism as "the idealization and constant encouragement
of insatiability - the deification of dissatisfaction" (143)
- he acknowledges that evangelical revivalism has been complicit in
establishing this ethos (pace R. Laurence Moore and Jackson
Lears). The chapter on John Coltrane demonstrates the true breadth
of Clapp's soul, since he acknowledges that prayer, faith, and a genuine
spiritual life can exist outside of Christian exclusivism (177-184).
[9] Clapp encourages readers to approach Border Crossings
in a non-linear manner; thus, individual essays, written in a popular,
approachable style, could be useful in teaching. For instance, consider
his analogy that the "not-religious-but-spiritual" individualism
of American religion is like someone claiming to be a great football
player but eschewing team play in favor of punting in his own backyard
(97). Contestable? Of course. But, like much of this volume, its provocative
yet playful qualities render it worthy of engagement.
[10] Any book without an index is an abomination in my sight, but,
as with other sins of commission and ontology, I'm willing to look
the other way for Border Crossings. If the ultimate good review
consists in sharing a book, suffice to say I have recommended it to
a number of colleagues, with the caveat that there is something quite
delightful in a book so clever, so fun (and so funny), and yet so
faulty (and so honest about that possibility).
Jennifer Rycenga, San José State University
(jrycenga@earthlink.net)
