Book Review: A Many Colored Kingdom

This summer for class I was required to read A Many Colored Kingdom, A: Multicultural Dynamics for Spiritual Formation. Honestly, it was the type of class where you shouldn't expect a high level of academic reading, so we can say that this book took me by surprise.  It wasn't the intensity that I was expecting, but the vast amount of theological topics that were part of the discussion.

A Many Colored Kingdom is written by three people who are part of the ethnic minority in the American Church, by marriage and birth, and have navigated this inside of the academy.  Instead of bemoaning injustice and hurdles, the authors instead show the complex theological matrix that exists in non-majority cultures. 

If anything, I think this book is a great study in social theology. The authors have a wonderful anthropological stance that teaches that humans are both "the best and the worst" of creation through the fall.  We exist in this state where we still have evidence of what we were, but are incapable (at times) of naturally exercising the goodness that we still have.  Overcoming the curse of Babel means a return to the one culture that existed in the Garden.  This isn't a call towards a homogenized view of the kingdom, but a "preparing" of God drawing all nations to himself in the Eschaton.

The piece that excited me the most was written by S. Steve Kang in chapter 4.  It involved a sociological engagment with Parker Palmer and a "sociocultural constructed nature of knowledge."  Inside of our multiple communities, the Church is involved in (re)enculturing people to the Kingdom of God.  Our communities of faith are involved in formative practices (means of grace to us Wesleyans) that turn us from citizens of this world and into citizens of the kingdom.  Learning faith happens not in isolation, but within the community of faith.  Palmer contends that through this, people begin to see a new truth...that is bound up inside the community. 

Where this gets interesting is when it gets to Paulo Freire, and his belief that humans have in them inherit power to see problems in current social situations and to then truly transform them, despite any odds.  This sociocultural look at church shows a process of

1. (re)enculturing through kingdom values.
2. Natural values are know found through a kingdom of God ethos lived in community.
3. With this new reality, communities have the ability to enact a gospel ethic of the Kingdom of God in their own area, providing a vital transformation.

Unlike other attempts to systematize this, Kang does not discount the Gospel act of justification and sanctification, but places it in primary importance.

A Many Colored Kingdom would serve well in a basic theology class, any class on multi-culturalism or a contemporary sociology of Christianity.  I think it was a worthwhile read, and the format worked wonderfully.

Comments

[Kelly Lawson]

I had to read this one for class, too, and didn't expect much from it. I thought it would be more of the same things countless other books had already said. But, like you said, the format worked really well, and I thoroughly enjoyed the book. In fact, I immediately put it in my "keeper" pile, and I've referenced it a couple of times since.