For the full article,
authored by Kyle Childress and originally published in The
Christian Century, click
here.
For a few more excerpts from the piece, read
on.
"Berry’s much beloved Sabbath poems were
written about Sundays when he may be walking through his
fields, pastures and woods instead of going to church. In
his fiction, the church exists on the periphery of the
community’s fellowship, and exhibits what philosopher
Norman Wirzba calls a "disincarnate form of Christianity,"
a kind of gnosticism, isolated and disconnected from where
the people live their lives during the week. Many of us
are recovering gnostics and have served in those
"disincarnate" churches."
"I started
learning how to do a hermeneutics of people-hood, sitting
on front porches and working gardens with the people and
drinking iced tea afterwards while listening to their
stories, including their stories of race and fear. As a
result, my preaching and teaching changed. I still talked
about race, but how I talked about it was different. My
sermons began to grow out of the conversation between the
people and the Bible and the place where they lived. I
learned to listen throughout the week in order to speak
for 20 minutes on Sunday morning."
"A veteran
pastor told me "that there never has been a pastor fired
for visiting too much." I spend an enormous amount of time
paying attention to the details of members’ lives. In the
afternoons I am usually out visiting with folks, for I
have found that most of the good, deep-down work of
cultivating disciples happens where they live and work and
spend their time, and much less often in my study and in
the crisis times. It is during the crisis times that
people reap from what was planted and nurtured during
their day-to-day living."
"But
communities of people who share life in this way are rare,
and the sense of tradition is practically extinct. Here is
where we have to move beyond Berry. In his stories the
church exists on the edge of the common life of the people
as only a fading, pale reflection of the larger community.
We need churches that are instead the very ground of
community, that define and build and embody a kind of
common life that can move beyond the walls of the church
and demonstrate common living in the wider society. In
other words, we are to do the proper work of helping
congregations know that we are the body of Christ. In
Christ, we are re-membered every Sunday in worship as the
body and our liturgy, our work, extends beyond Sunday
through the rest of the week. At the same time, our common
life during the week helps keep our Sunday work from
becoming gnostic."
And to engage Berry directly, you might consider the following
titles:
