Category: md-3-2

David Lipscomb feared that wealth had perverted the mission and work of the church in late nineteenth-century America. A ruralist ethos reigned among his contemporaries, resulting in prejudice against the urban poor. Yet, Lipscomb believed the gospel was fundamentally good news to the poor—including the urban poor. He called prophetically for churches to preach the gospel as Jesus did, by identifying with the poor and communicating the message to them in understandable ways.

In 1967 David Edwin Harrell, Jr., published a significant, though relatively unknown, article entitled “The Agrarian Myth and the Disciples of Christ in the Nineteenth Century.”1 The article demonstrated that the Stone-Campbell Movement, a thoroughly western religious body, was birthed in the midst of agrarian mythology (that is, a particular way of looking at the world). Specifically, this myth envisioned the newly founded United States with its seemingly boundless western expansion as the “garden of the world.” It was rooted in “the conviction that rural life was superior to urban life” and that the “foremost hero of the garden myth was the yeoman farmer.”2 This figure was the typical small, industrious, and independent farm of the Midwest, which became the dominant model in the South after the demise of “plantation mythology” due to the abolition of slavery.

The Stone-Campbell Movement, ultimately including the distinctive Churches of Christ, was nurtured in this agrarian mythology. As a consequence, urbanity was viewed with pity and sometimes suspicion. Alexander Campbell, for example, wrote, “American cities, like all other cities” were “neither so intelligent in the scriptures, nor so pious as the people of the country.”3 Most everyone assumed that people in the cities, as the future President of David Lipscomb College put it, “would be better off physically, financially, and spirituality in the country.”4 In fact, it was generally believed that the cities were the “great corrupters of the morals of mankind, like lewd women to whom they are compared by the sacred writers of both Testaments.”5 “The cities are moral and spiritual deserts,” wrote the Ohio preacher B. A. Hinsdale. “They contain the dangerous classes.”6

“Dangerous classes” reflects not only the prejudices of the times but also the threat that the cities posed to another “myth” that gave birth to the Stone-Campbell Movement. As Harrell demonstrates, Alexander Campbell, Walter Scott, and others believed that “America was the land prepared for the introduction of the Anglo-Saxon Protestant millennium.” Immigration threatened this as Roman Catholics and non-Anglo-Saxons populated the cities, where there seemed to be simultaneous rise of immorality and poverty. The cities were the power base of the Catholic Church and the epicenter of immorality within the nation.

Many feared that the cities fomented the development of an impoverished working class whose lives were characterized by immorality and irreligiosity. A St. Louis editor warned that “the laboring classes of the great cities are largely irreligious” and “have loose ideas of the rights of property, openly preach the right to take whatever is wanted, and to burn, blow up and destroy.”7 Consequently, many members of the Stone-Campbell Movement, especially conservative ones, believed, according to Harrell, that the “church should ignore these centers of sin and concentrate on farmers.”8 The illiterate, non-Anglo-Saxon, impoverished immigrant was a threat to law, order, and religion.

In this milieu David Lipscomb (1831-1917), the longtime editor of the Gospel Advocate and co-founder of what is now Lipscomb University, appeared as a dissenting voice.9 Though deeply enmeshed within the Agrarian Myth—Lipscomb’s stated preference was that the “best community in the world is that every man own his own land, small farms with industrious owners”10—he nevertheless advocated for the urban poor and working classes (including Labor Unions).11

The Gospel for the Urban Poor

The year 1873 was a significant economic year within United States history. This period was known as the “Great Depression” until the new “Great Depression” arrived in the 1930s. Reconstruction in the South tended to place power and money in the hands of an elite few. The rise of the “robber barons” such as the Rockefellers and the Vanderbilts gave a few excessive wealth. As Lipscomb put it in 1892, “money is more and more becoming concentrated in the hands of the wealthy” and is becoming a “controlling element in all the affairs of society.”12 The chasm between the rich and poor grew in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. This, linked with the explosive growth of cities, nurtured deep suspicions that were part of the Agrarian Myth.

This was evidenced in an 1873 editorial in the Apostolic Times (1869-1885), a conservative paper based in Lexington, Kentucky. In the April 24, 1873 Gospel Advocate, Lipscomb reprinted the editorial. Lipscomb was appalled by what he read. The article, in part, said:

The only poor in this broad land that have not equal access with the rich to the blessings of the gospel, are the poor in the great cities. It is also true, that they are about the only class of poor people among whom the gospel does but little good when it does reach them. The great mass of them are besotted by vices of all the baser kinds, that they turn a deaf ear to all the messages of truth and virtue. It was not to this class of the poor that Jesus referred in his celebrated reply to John; it was the poor peasantry of Galilee and Judea, who, though ignorant and often reduced to extreme want, were an industrious, sober, and comparatively poor people. Let us not confound things that greatly differ, and draw unfavorable comparisons between ancient and modern Christianity without sufficient cause.13

Lipscomb’s response was brief but illuminating.14 Lipscomb found the editorial alarming at two levels. The first was the writer’s disdain for the “pre-emptive rights” of the poor, and the second the writer’s apparent tendency to cater to the rich. I will address Lipscomb’s first concern in this section and address the second in the next.

At the heart of Lipscomb’s response was his belief that “the poor possess pre-emptive rights in the kingdom of God.”15 Indeed, the poor, “as a class, constitute [God’s] elect. They are the chosen objects of his tender regard and true and faithful love.”16 Contrary to the “general disposition among [many] to despise a state of poverty, or even moderate competence, and regard it as a disgrace,” God has “honored the poor as a class in all ages.”17

What drives this theological assessment? Fundamentally, it is Lipscomb’s christology. Lipscomb tended, in his various articles, to emphasize three points above all others. First, the incarnation testified to a divine kenosis (emptying) whereby the Son of God, who is rich, becomes poor for our sakes. “The Savior himself declared his sympathy with the poor when he came as the poorest of the poor.”18

His Son was born of a humble handmaid of the Lord, who was espoused to a carpenter. The reputed Father of our Lord, Joseph, was a carpenter. The laboring, toiling classes were the associates chosen of God for his Son during his childhood and youth.19

Jesus was born of a poor woman who married a working class “day laborer.” They were so impoverished that they offered “two turtle doves,” the offering “provided for the poor.” Jesus lived as a “homeless wanderer” who “mingled with the poor in their homes, ate of their coarse barley loaves, and shared their frugal face.”20 In other words, the incarnation serves as a missional model for how to minister among the poor. Jesus ministered among the poor as one of the poor.

Second, in his own ministry—and in the ministry of the Apostles as well—Jesus modeled how the poor have priority. This was modeled in two ways. On the one hand, it was modeled by whom God chose as leaders in this new community. “The more prominent of his Apostles were from the laboring classes,” including fishermen.21

On the other hand, the priority of the poor is modeled in how Jesus himself conducted his ministry. The preaching of the gospel was truly evidenced, according to Lipscomb, when the gospel was preached to the poor. Indeed, this was the “crowning characteristic of the Christian religion.”22 Moreover, it was the “perfect evidence of [Jesus’] Messiahship” that “the poor have the gospel preached” to them.23 According to Lipscomb, both “Christ and his apostles preached to the poor of the cities,” including “servants, slaves, poorer classes” in Rome and “widows” in Jerusalem.24 These, for the most part, composed the churches of the New Testament era. “The chief success of the Christian religion was in the cities, and among the poor of those cities.”25

Third, Jesus is himself “personified” in the poor. Jesus is present in the poor. Rooting his theology in the judgment scene of Matthew 25, Lipscomb wrote:

Jesus Christ personified himself in his poor brethren. He stands to-day personified in the gaunt and hollow face, sunken eye, and half-clad emaciated form of widowed mothers and hungry, starving children in the South. If Christians fail to relieve their wants, no matter whether we or they believe in societies or not, and no matter whether their sympathies were Northern or Southern, the stern truth will one day meet them, “Inasmuch as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me. And these shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into everlasting life.”26

This ethical imagery was near to the heart of Lipscomb as he used it on several occasions. To minister to the poor is to minister to Jesus.

What incensed Lipscomb about the Apostolic Times article was that “to teach that certain classes are so degraded that the Gospel of God’s love cannot reach the poor, is certainly to despise them, and is nigh akin to oppressing them.”27 Lipscomb thought that neglecting, shaming, or snubbing the poor was equivalent to oppressing them. To oppress the poor was to mistreat Jesus himself, dishonor God’s elect, and assume a prideful arrogance that puts the rich in the privileged place of the poor.

The problem, according to Lipscomb, was not that the urban poor are disinterested in the gospel or that they—as a class—are unreachable. In fact, “the extreme poor of the cities in the days of Christ and the apostles were not the class difficult to reach.”28 It was the despised, weak, and ignoble that responded to the gospel in Rome, Corinth, and the ministry of Jesus. The problem, according to Lipscomb, was that the gospel is not really preached to the poor. They may be told the truth of the gospel but they are told in such a way that it is injurious to the gospel itself. The poor, Lipscomb believed, “are not approached in the true Spirit of Christ.”29 This was a second theme that Lipscomb applied to the topic, to which I now turn.

The Cities, Wealth, and the Poor

Lipscomb opposed the expenditure of large sums of money on “fine houses” in the cities. His rationale, though influenced by the Agrarian Myth, is deeply theological. Like his advocacy for small farms, Lipscomb’s consistent counsel throughout the years was small, modest buildings rather than “fine houses.” Smaller and more modest is better than large and lavish. This is how he thought about congregations as well—relatively small, modest, every member involved, marked by mutual edification and shared leadership. Wealth, power, and “fine houses” were corrupting influences that diverted the church from its mission to the poor and the lost. The large church with a “fine house” fostered, according to Lipscomb, a faith in success, wealth, and power; while the small church tended to foster community, service, and relationships with the poor.

The urban poor did not participate in urban church life because the urban churches catered to the wealthy and rich. They built “fine houses” whose surroundings were unsuited to the working class, employed articulate and educated ministers whom the poor did not understand, and sought monied classes because money was the life-blood of their grand buildings and educated ministers. While the poor would receive Jesus gladly, they did not flock to urban churches whose edifices were geared toward the cultured, educated, and wealthy. The reason was obvious to Lipscomb: they did not reject the “religion of Christ,” but they rejected the power, wealth, and pride of Christianity’s teachers. Even when these churches set up parachurch organizations that reached out to the poor, the distance between rich and poor was maintained, as church folk were not in the homes of the poor sharing their meals and trials.

Theologically, Lipscomb argued, “the church is the especial legacy of God to the poor of the earth.” Consequently, “the poor then should, above all others, feel at home in the church”—with “special privileges there above all others.”30 God “never intended” that Christianity would be “costly to the poor” or “make the poor feel that they are pensioners upon the bounty of the rich.” Rather than money, it was self-denying service that was the hallmark of the Christian faith. But Lipscomb feared that wealth had perverted the mission and work of the church and particularly the “demands for the expenditure of money” had tended to “oppress [the poor] or make them feel that they are pensioners upon the bounty of others.”31 In other words, the poor have no church. Rather, they are at the mercy of the rich who rule the church and dictate the “fashionable” standards that represent the status of the church in the community.

Lipscomb was concerned that churches (and preachers) sought out the rich rather than the poor because they valued their status in the community (“world”), thereby forsaking their mission to embody the gospel among the poor. Anyone who “seeks the rich and the learned and the fashionable . . . instead of the poor and simple-hearted and unpretending, by that course nullifies the power of the great truth” of the gospel.32 They perverted the very nature of the church that “God ordained . . . for the common people.”33

The church that fails to exhibit that its first, most important work is to preach the gospel to the poor, has utterly failed to appreciate the true spirit of its mission, and the character of work it was established to perform. The congregation of true worshippers of Jesus Christ always exhibits the greatest anxiety to have the poor preached to. In all of its provisions for worship, the comfort and accommodation of the poor must be its first object.34

It is no surprise that when the poor are approached in a “patronizing, self-righteous style, by those so delicate and refined that they cannot eat a morsel of hard bread with them, or sympathize with their trials, they reject the approach. Had the Son of God approached them in such a style, he would have failed too.”35 But this was exactly what was happening in the cities, according to Lipscomb. “We believe,” he wrote, “the tendency of the age is to adapt religion to the rich and drive off the poor.”36

How do the rich drive off the poor in urban settings? Lipscomb has several examples, but his most significant and most constant was his critique of the church’s cultural adaptation to the “worldly” expectations in the design of their buildings. One of the most celebrated examples of this is the building of the Central Christian Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. Completed in 1872, the French Gothic edifice could seat 2,000 people. The nave itself was 103 feet high and 125 feet long with what was reputed to be the largest stained glass window in the nation. The building cost $140,000. This was more than the total sum Lipscomb was able to raise among Stone-Campbell members in the post-war years for the poor in the South.37

Lipscomb, among others, was not amused by this development. Indeed, he was outraged. But by 1892, only twenty years later, the Central Church was putting out feelers to sell the building because not only was it “too expensive to keep up,” but “many of the wealthy members [had] moved out to the suburbs” and united with other congregations. While Lipscomb did not rejoice in the lack of growth in the church, he did rejoice over the prospect that the building would be sold. He had believed at the time that it was “a sin against God and his people to put such large sums of money in a building, when so many thousands and millions of our fellow creatures are suffering want and going down to hell for lack of the truth.” Such an “expenditure” was more about ministering to “human pride” than it was honoring God.38

The episode reminded Lipscomb of 1850s Nashville. When the $30,000 “fine house” that seated twelve hundred people mysteriously burned in 1857, Lipscomb “publicly” expressed his joy. Even in 1892 he regarded the fire as a “blessing from God.” His rationale is that such extravagant houses “hinder instead of forward the cause of true religion.” What Nashville should have done—and later did do—was build a “half dozen modest” buildings for small churches rather than one edifice for a large congregation.39 This had been effective for Nashville since the fire. While in 1865 Nashville only had two congregations with a total of 500 members, by 1889 it had over 2,500 members with several additional congregations. Cincinnati, Lipscomb reported, only claimed 1,000 members.40 Lipscomb suggested that Atlanta follow the example of Nashville. Instead of building a $30,000 edifice, it should build “a few modest houses, as needed.”41

Now that the Central Christian Church was open to selling its property, he hoped that they would “build a dozen simple, modest houses for worship, that correspond to the principles and aims of the Christian religion.”42 Like small farms that suit the common people, so small churches are well suited to the poor. The urban poor, Lipscomb argued, would only hear the gospel when they heard it in an incarnational way.

Lipscomb’s rationale was more than pragmatic. It reflected what he believed to be the heart of the gospel. Christ is our example. “Christ came to the poor and adapted himself to the surroundings and wants of the poor.” Consequently, “all the surroundings of his religion were simple, plain and unostentatious.”43 The “fine houses” of the wealthy in which the poor are invited to worship is the exact opposite of Christ’s incarnational model. Instead of approaching the poor with sympathy and dignity, they repelled the poor with their ostentatious wealth and rhetoric.

The whole effort to gratify the culture of the world in artistic speaking, music and surroundings that indicate wealth and luxury, attract the idle and curious, those anxious to be entertained, for a time, but as these efforts clog, as they sooner or later will, they drive these very persons from whom heart melody, heart service, heart worship were sacrificed away from the church. It substitutes a barren, empty formality for loving, hearty, worshipful service to God. The efforts to accommodate the religion of Christ to these luxurious and artistic surroundings destroy spiritual power and spiritual earnestness.44

When Christianity assumes power and sides with the wealthy, the poor are oppressed. They are driven away by the wealthy. Jesus, according to Lipscomb, walked with the poor, became poor for their sake, and ministered to the poor. Churches ought, following the model of Jesus, to situate themselves so that the poor feel at home in their communities. “As Jesus, in his own life and teaching, presented his religion to the world, it commended itself to the common people, the working people, rather than to the high, the rich, the rulers, and the learned.” Though some from the wealthier classes accepted the gospel, “the pride of learning and of riches and ambition for place and power unfitted the hearts that cherished them for the reception of that religion.” Lipscomb, then, drew the conclusion that “riches, ambition, love of power, and pride of intellect do not create an atmosphere suited for the growth of the religion of Jesus Christ.”45

Conclusion

Lipscomb believed that the “masses in the cities” today would hear the gospel with joyful hearts if the church approached them in the “spirit of Christ.” When they are approached, however, with the trappings of the “tastes of the rich and cultured,” they infer that “none save the rich and cultured are desired in the church.” Even the preaching, with its educated rhetoric and cultured erudition, “suits the wealthy” and is “illy adapted to the understanding of the poor.”46 When churches require a vast amount of money, “the spirit of the gospel is lost in these churches in the anxiety to attract the rich and cultured.” The poor are neglected and the rich are courted.47 The poor do not thereby reject the religion of Jesus but the religion of the wealthy.

God ordained the church for the working people; the gospel is for the poor. It is through them that God will inaugurate his kingdom and transform the world. “God chose the common people as effective agents through whom he would root out the wickedness and rectify wrongs and re-establish right and justice among men.”48 Lipscomb hoped that one day he would see many efforts in the cities “to establish and operate a church among the common people in fidelity to the principles” of the gospel.49

Our church buildings, our dress, and our attitudes should be shaped by an incarnational posture that welcomes the poor. Do we create spaces, relationships, and opportunities where the poor feel welcome? Given our upper middle class buildings, fashionable dress, and expensive toys, it is little wonder that the poor are generally uncomfortable. Lipscomb’s statement reminds us that while our American churches—for the most part—are oriented toward the middle class and rich, this is not the fundamental orientation of the kingdom of God within the narrative of Scripture.

To conclude this article, I offer this brief note by Lipscomb that epitomizes his perspective. This theological orientation functioned at the heart of his understanding of the gospel for over fifty years—from the beginning of his editorship of the Gospel Advocate in 1866 until his death in 1917. We would do well to hear these words in our own context.

The crowning characteristic of the Christian religion in the esteem of its founder, is that the “poor have the gospel preached to them.” The church that fails to exhibit that its first, most important work is to preach the gospel to the poor, has utterly failed to appreciate the true spirit of its mission, and the character of work it was established to perform. The congregation of true worshippers of Jesus Christ always exhibits the greatest anxiety to have the poor preached to. In all of its provisions for worship, the comfort and accommodation of the poor must be its first object. The congregation that erects the costly and elegant edifice, that furnishes the floor, the seats, the altar, the communion table, in such a manner, that makes the poor feel that they are not for them, cannot be the Church of Christ. The congregation whose members dress in the “fine linen and purple” of wealth, whose equipages and bearing are of a character to prevent a home-feeling in the plainly dressed, humble poor, in their midst, is not a congregation in which the spirit of the Redeemer dwells. The individual, man or woman, who attends meeting in such style of dress, that the poor, plainly clad laborer is made to feel the unpleasant contrast in their equipages, is an enemy of the religion of Jesus Christ. The poor of the land are driven from the religious services of the so-called Church of Christ, because the whole surroundings at those services, plainly say by their costly and gilded equipments that they are for the rich, not for the poor. The profession of Christianity has well nigh run into the sheerest mockery of the religion of primitive times upon this very point. Where is the house for worship in the city or the country, that is now builded with a view of its adaptation to the wants and customs of the poor, and not rather to exhibit the tastes and minster to the pride of the rich? The poor fail to attend religious worship, especially in the cities, not because they are less disposed to be religious than the rich, but because the pomp, dress, parade, equipages and style of these services declare plainly to them, they are not for you. The spirit of the church must be changed—radically changed in this respect, before it can be truly the Church of Christ. The thousands of the poor in the cities and in the country, must be sought out —preached to—must have congregations whose dress, style, manners and associations will draw them to them, rather than repel them from them, and these congregations so conforming themselves to the true spirit of the Gospel, and adapting their habits to the necessities of the poor, will alone constitute THE CHURCH OF CHRIST.50

John Mark Hicks is Professor of Theology at Lipscomb University in Nashville, TN. He has published numerous articles, both popular and scholarly, contributed to thirteen books, and authored or co-authored an additional nine, including Kingdom Come: Embracing the Spiritual Legacy of David Lipscomb and James Harding (Abilene: Leafwood Publishers, 2006). He can be contacted at hicksjm@yahoo.com.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Campbell, Alexander. “Notes of an Excursion to the Eastern Cities, No. II.” Millennial Harbinger, n.s., 7 (February 1843): 58-65.

Dunnavant, Anthony L. “David Lipscomb and the ‘Preferential Option for the Poor’ among Postbellum Churches of Christ.” In The Stone-Campbell Movement: An International Religious Tradition, edited by Michael W. Casey and Douglas A. Foster, 435-454. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2002.

Elam, E. A. “Going to Town.” Gospel Advocate 37 (25 April 1895): 262.

“Great Cities.” Christian Pioneer 7 (1 August 1867): 42. As quoted in Harrell, David Edwin, Jr. “The Agrarian Myth and the Disciples of Christ in the Nineteenth Century.” Agricultural History 41, no. 2 (April 1967): 185.

Harrell, David Edwin, Jr. “The Agrarian Myth and the Disciples of Christ in the Nineteenth Century.” Agricultural History 41 (April 1967): 181-92.

Hicks, John Mark, and Bobby Valentine. Kingdom Come: Embracing the Spiritual Legacy of David Lipscomb and James A. Harding. Abilene: Leafwood Press, 2006.

Hinsdale, B. A. “The Poor and the Gospel.” Christian Standard 1 (10 November 1866): 254.

Hooper, Robert E. Crying in the Wilderness: A Biography of David Lipscomb. Nashville: David Lipscomb College, 1979.

Lipscomb, David. “Christ and the Working People.” Gospel Advocate 38 (4 June 1896): 356-57.

________. “Christ the Savior of the World.” Gospel Advocate 8 (20 February 1866): 124.

________. “Church Pews.” Gospel Advocate 20 (5 December 1878): 762.

________. “Destitution, Its Cause.” Gospel Advocate 17 (25 March 1875): 300-1.

________. “Dispensing Christian Fellowship.” Gospel Advocate 8 (24 July 1866): 478-79.

________. “Fine Houses for Worship.” Gospel Advocate 34 (28 January 1892): 52-53.

________. “Mob Law.” Gospel Advocate 34 (2 June 1892): 340.

________. “[Notice].” Gospel Advocate 8 (27 February 1866): 107-108.

________. “Preaching to the Poor.” Gospel Advocate 15 (24 April 1873): 390-91.

________. “Preaching to the Poor.” Gospel Advocate 15 (19 May 1873): 508-11.

________. “The Church as God Ordained It—The Church for the Working People.” Gospel Advocate 38 (9 July 1896): 436-37.

________. “The Spirit of the Church.” Gospel Advocate 8 (13 February 1866): 107-108.

________. “Thirty Years Work.” Gospel Advocate 38 (2 January 1896): 4.

________. “Who are to Blame?” Gospel Advocate 11 (6 May 1869): 422-25.

“Why Does Crime Increase?” Christian Evangelist 22 (28 May 1885): 339. As quoted in Harrell, David Edwin, Jr. “The Agrarian Myth and the Disciples of Christ in the Nineteenth Century.” Agricultural History 41, no. 2 (April 1967): 190.

In recent years, the phrase “incarnational ministry” has entered the Christian vernacular as a method of engaging in urban ministry. Christian communities seeking to serve the city draw upon the example of Jesus. Jesus abandoned the heavenly places and relocated to earth and made his dwelling among us. Jesus’ incarnation becomes the theological motif for Christians who relocate to the city to minister in the city. The motif of incarnational ministry can provide a powerful theological motivation but can also be misappropriated. This essay explores the potential misapplication of the theology of the incarnation in the context of urban ministry and offers interpretations of the incarnation that seeks to strengthen the practices of the urban church.

How Do We View the City?

One of the difficulties in engaging the topic of incarnational urban ministry is defining the terms urban and city. If we were to draw upon the range of options found in Western thought for the definition of the city, we would be hard-pressed to determine one specific definition that is commonly and consistently used. One approach to the city in Western thought is the depiction of the city in abstract terms. The ability to define the city in abstract terms allows those who engage the city potentially to redefine the city on their own terms.

While cities certainly existed prior to the Greeks, it is in the Greek word for the city, polis, where the city begins to mean more than simply the collection of citizens in a defined physical location: “The Greek word for city, polis, meant far more to an Athenian . . . than a place on the map; it meant the place where people achieve unity.”1 Aristotle, in particular, begins to expand the definition of the city beyond the physical and the material. For Aristotle, the polis is not so much a location bound by geography but a destination, the end goal of human endeavor. Human partnerships and cooperation should move towards the authoritative good of all. “As we see that every city is a society and every society is established for some good purpose.”2

The end goal of the polis is not simply life lived in the context of a particular location. The polis is both the concrete concept of a political entity but also the abstract concept for collective human life and a socio-political entity. Aristotle states:

It is evident that this is the principle upon which they are every one founded, and this is more especially true of that which has for its object the best possible, and is itself the most excellent, and comprehends all the rest. Now this is called a city, and the society thereof a political society.3

Because of the heavily symbolic nature of the city, the city comes to represent more than its actual physical reality. It comes to represent the collective human endeavor.

The ongoing influence of Aristotle in urban thought is the abstraction of the city, not simply as a gathering of people within a geographic boundary but as the locus of human activity. The Greeks see the positive potential and direction of the city as a gathering of humanity moving towards a virtuous telos. As the culmination of human activity, the city has the great potential to embody the best of human life but also the worst. Western thought embodies both expressions.

Augustine follows suit in using the term city as an abstraction. For Augustine, the human city is the secular realm, existing in stark contrast to the city of God. The two cities stand in opposition to one another. The realm of the city of God is the realm of God’s dominion and authority. The human city is the work of human hands. Human cities, therefore, are viewed with a degree of suspicion. Since the true city of God is not being built in the earthly realm but in the heavenly realm, the earthly expression of a city would not yield the city of God. As Augustine writes:

The earthly city was created by self-love reaching the point of contempt for God, the Heavenly City by the love of God carried as far as contempt of self. In fact, the earthly city glories in itself, the Heavenly City glories in the Lord. The former looks for glory from men, the latter finds its highest glory in God.4

As Luke Bretherton summarizes, “For Augustine, the only true society and true peace exist in the city of God.”5

The cities of the earth stand in for the kingdom of earth, resulting in a rejection of the city as a potential site of redemption or as a location worth redeeming. In Augustine, there is the rejection of loyalty towards the earthly city and an embracing of loyalty to the heavenly city. Augustine’s development of a contrasting framework between God’s city and the human city furthers the abstract understanding of the city. The city is more than a location. It is a summary of human life or the transcendent work of God outside of the realm of the flesh. In Augustine’s framework, the virtuous city of God is not found in the earthly realm.

The advent of the industrial age meant that the city arrived as both an elevated and abstract philosophical and sociological concept and a heightened reality in everyday life. There would be an increasing awareness of both the positive potential of the city and the potential danger of the city. Industrialization meant that populations would increasingly move in greater numbers from an agrarian and rural setting to an industrial and urban setting.

In the twentieth century, the Augustinian perception of this division between the ungodly, secular culture and a contrasting godly culture widens. Exasperating the assumptions of this demarcation is the rapid proliferation of cities, the explosion of the global urban population, and the rapid shifting of populations towards the city. These drastic changes contribute to the sense of distinction and separation between the city and non-city regions. The sense of contrast and conflict deepens between the two worlds. This dichotomy has a problematic application in many Christian circles. The city can be viewed as the center of all that is wrong with the world, while the suburbs can be seen as what is right with the world.

For theologians Harvey Cox and Jacques Ellul, the city is often equivalent to culture, or, at minimum, the sum total of human endeavor. In a sense, both Cox and Ellul reflect the Aristotelian perspective that the city is the sum total of human life. The two theologians, however, hold vastly differing opinions regarding the value and worth of the city. As Cox writes, “In our day the secular metropolis stands as both the pattern of our life together and the symbol of our view of the world.”6 Cox’s perspective, best exemplified in The Secular City, holds the more optimistic position that the city is the culmination of all that is good about humanity. It is the height of humanism. Cox finds redemptive elements of the aggregate life of human community. The concentration of humanity in community life multiplies human goodness. “If secularization designates the content of man’s coming of age, urbanization describes the context in which it is occurring. . . . The urban center is the place of human control, of rational planning, of bureaucratic organization.”7 The secular city is to be celebrated as the good end of earthly human life.

Ellul, on the other hand, tends to hold a more pessimistic view of the city. The city is the culmination of human sinfulness. Cox’s perspective upholds the goodness of humanity (the image of God found in humanity) and the capacity to create good arising out of a good humanity. Ellul’s perspective asserts the fallenness of humanity (the reality of sin found in humanity) and the capacity to multiply sinfulness arising out of a fallen humanity. In The Presence of the Kingdom, Ellul states that “a major fact of our present civilization is that more and more sin becomes collective, and the individual is forced to participate in collective sin.”8 For Ellul, the concentration of humanity in the city is not the multiplication of human goodness but the multiplication of human sinfulness. While Cox and Ellul greatly differ on the general characteristic of the goodness or sinfulness of the city, both seem to reflect the Aristotelian approach that the city represents more than its mere physical reality but that the city gestures towards a larger and more abstract meaning. This trend continues in the writings of Graham Ward, James Dougherty, and others, who continue to use the term city to represent civilization, culture, and society.9

There is an array of opinion regarding whether a collection of humanity in the city yields a positive, virtuous end or a negative, destructive end. Despite this difference, the common method is to abstract the city to represent more than its physical and material reality. The abstraction and reification of the term city can result in an inability to engage the city in concrete and material terms. An abstract concept can be portrayed in extremes, potentially resulting in an all good or all bad perception of the city.

The city should not merely be an abstract concept that references politics or culture. Instead, we should view the city not only for what it represents (although there is a theological import of what the city represents) but for what the city actually is. The city is a gathering of people in one location that expresses the vast range of human life and activity in a particular location. The city is the city. It is the neighborhood where people are gathered together. This particular gathering of human life raises the same sense of need of any human gathering. In this way, it reflects the power of community life. It is not, however, only an abstract reality to be seen reductively through its theoretical representation.

If the city is merely an abstraction, then the response to that abstraction is another abstraction. The only legitimate change is, in this construal, further philosophical and theological abstraction and the triumph of ideas and values over any real on-the-ground changes. Urban theology then becomes an abstraction battling an abstraction; the battle of ideas. But if the city is an actual location, neighborhood, and community, urban ministry should draw from a theology that has a concrete expression. The church in the city is not merely engaging in a metaphorical battle, but it is working to bring real change in a material reality. The movement away from the city as an abstraction results in the possibility that the presence of the church shaped by Christian theology could have an impact on the city of humanity. The actual, physical realm of the city provides a place for concrete action by the church.

Limitations of Understanding the Incarnation of the Body of Christ

Applying the incarnation narrative to the urban church requires the recognition of key limitations. One of the most significant potential misapplications of the concept of incarnational ministry is that the church could mirror in every way the power and mystery of Christ’s incarnation. A key to the incarnational life of the church in the city is the awareness that the church is not the complete and perfect reflection of Jesus’ incarnation. While the church is established by Jesus as a holy institution, it is still comprised of human beings with human limitations. The church’s imitation of Christ should not be seen as a strict one-to-one correspondence between the incarnation of Jesus and the embodiment of Christ in the city through the church.

The first key limitation on the application of the incarnation is that one individual cannot fully and completely embody Christ, but rather, the individual is a part of the community that collectively embodies Christ. Western culture tends to centralize the role of the individual in society. The dominant theme of individualism in Western culture leads to the elevation of the individual as the primary force of transformation—usually in the form of the heroic individual. The image of the rugged individual called to conquer the wild frontier is a common expression of the Western individualist narrative.

The heroic and triumphant individual is not only found in Western culture but also in the context of the American church. The tendency in the church to elevate the heroic individual leads to the dysfunctional narrative of the Christian as the incarnate savior for the inner city—usually in the person of the heroic white pastor who arrives to save the urban black poor.10 The application of the incarnation, however, should never be the justification for the actions of the individual with a messiah complex. The individual does not have the capacity to single-handedly embody the Messiah, but rather it is the community that corporately embodies Christ. Western culture’s excessive individualism leads to the failure to understand that the power of the church is not in a heroic Christian individual superstar but in the community that is the body of Christ. The body of Christ must be seen in its corporate expression rather than being expressed through the individual.

A second key difference between the person of Jesus and the application of the incarnation to the body of Christ is the limitation of the authority of the church. Jesus’ authority as the Messiah finds its full expression in the kingdom of God. Jesus’ fulfillment as the king is the full eschatological realization of God’s kingdom and Christ’s kingship in that kingdom. Jesus expresses his authority in the Great Commission: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matt 28:18–20).11 Jesus proclaims his authority, and the charge to the disciples arises out of that authority. Yet, the Great Commission does not automatically transmit that full authority to the church. It is passed on to the church to make disciples. The temptation is to see the church with the fullness of God’s authority as the body of Christ. However, in the same way that the incarnation of Jesus gestures towards the eschatological fulfillment of Christ’s return, the body of Christ in the in-between space reflects the authority of Jesus, but that authority prioritizes the making of disciples of Jesus.

For example, John Howard Yoder outlines the three-fold office of Jesus in Preface to Theology: prophet, priest, and king.12 A misinterpretation of the doctrine of the incarnation would be to see the church as the incarnation of Jesus’ role as the king. The main expression of the church as the body of Christ should be seen in the servant role that shapes all three expressions of Jesus’ messiahship. In The Politics of Jesus, Yoder writes:

There is thus but one realm in which the concept of imitation holds—but there it holds in every strand of the New Testament literature and all the more strikingly by virtue of the absence of parallels in other realms. This is at the point of the concrete social meaning of the cross in its relation to enmity and power. Servanthood replaces dominion, forgiveness absorbs hostility. Thus—and only thus—are we bound by New Testament thought to “be like Jesus.”13

The goal of the incarnate body of Christ in the city is not to grab for earthly power but to be a servant for the city. This prevailing notion of the body of Christ as a servant does not preclude the possibility of prophetic witness and challenge to the powers that be in the city. The church has the responsibility to stand in prophetic opposition to evil in the city. However, the servant nature of the body of Christ precludes the possibility that the church would replace the earthly kingdom and become an earthly power. The pursuit of earthly power, therefore, leads to the name of Jesus being inappropriately appropriated, with the doctrine of the incarnation manipulated by fallen humans for the sake of earthly power.

The key limitation in applying the incarnation of Jesus to the work of the church in the city is, therefore, to understand that there is not a one-to-one correspondence between Jesus, the physical body of Christ, and the church, the spiritual body of Christ. A popular misapplication of the doctrine of the incarnation is the positioning of the affluent suburbanite in the place of Christ. The affluent suburbanite is called to live out the incarnation by moving into the city to live among the poor. This misapplication puts the affluent (usually white) American in the place of divinity, bringing salvation to the poor (usually people of color) in the city. Incarnation is co-opted to further the privileged position of white suburbanites.

Jesus embodies divinity in his individual personhood, but no individual person in the church embodies Jesus in the city. Furthermore, the body of Christ has an authority that comes from Jesus’ total authority. The church’s identity and authority is a derivative identity and authority. The level of authority that Jesus has over the world is not the level of authority that the church has in the world. Limitations in correlation and application of the incarnation of the body of Jesus to the body of Christ in the city must be recognized.

The Urban Church as the Body of Christ

Being aware of these limitations, it is still possible to formulate positive correlations between our theological understanding of the incarnation and the role of the church in the city. The Scriptures attest to the defining of the church as the body of Christ. First Corinthians 12 claims that the church is one body composed of many parts, as it is with Christ (12:12–14). The passage concludes with the proclamation in verse 27 that “now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.” In Eph 4:12 and 5:23, there is a direct correlation between the church and the body of Christ. Finally, in Colossians, there is the assertion that Jesus is the head of his body, which is the church (1:18, 24) and that the whole body depends on connection with the head of the church (2:19). In each of these passages, we see the biblical understanding that the church is to be the ongoing embodiment of Christ. There is also the suggestion that the church is an organic being, a body that reflects the characteristics of the human body. Furthermore, the body that is the church relies upon the head of the church, which is Jesus. The image of an organic body that draws her identity from the body of Jesus is made explicit in these New Testament passages.

Given this connection in the Scriptures, this essay will explore three areas of application, with the understanding that additional applications are possible. First, the act of incarnation required humility that is characterized by a downward mobility. Second, the incarnation of Jesus reflects the heart of God to make his dwelling among us and to relate to us as his companions. Third, the movement of the incarnation required the embracing of suffering by Jesus. All three characteristics of the incarnation yield a model of how the body of Christ, the church, can relate to the city.

Furthermore, while the body of Christ is often understood metaphorically, true embodiment would require concrete and actual practices and actions. Our understanding of urban ecclesiology begins with the biblical motif of the body of Christ and the implication of this motif for urban ministry, not only as an abstracted theology but as authentic practices. It is through the practices of the church that the embodiment of Christ occurs in the city. As Sam Wells writes in Improvisation, the church needs to develop right practices and habits, “trusting itself to embody its traditions in new and often challenging circumstances.”14 The practices of the church in the city are urgently necessary given the number of potential crises in the urban context. Each of the three categories reflects the practices that arise from a theology of the incarnation. The emphasis will be on the important connection between Jesus’ body and the body of Christ, the church in the city.

The challenge of the Scripture is to see the church as the body of Christ, united and incarnate in the world. The promise of the Scripture is that Christ’s embodiment in the church could place the church on a trajectory of healthy engagement with the city. What Christians are not able to accomplish individually, the church as a body could accomplish corporately. The narrative of the incarnate body of Christ becomes the positive model for the practices of the urban church.

The incarnation as downward mobility

One of the central characteristics of the incarnation is God’s movement from the heavenly places to the earthly realm. This reflects God’s downward mobility and the associative laying down of power. This surrender of power provides a vivid example for the church to follow. In the same way that Jesus reflected humility in the emptying of his privilege and power, the church is also called to empty herself of privilege and power. The incarnational body of Christ should embody the ongoing laying down of power and privilege, rather than a seeking of greater power and privilege. If the focus of the church becomes the increase of the church’s power in this world, then the church no longer reflects the incarnation of Jesus. If, however, the church uses power for the benefit of the lame, the blind, and the sick, then the life of Jesus is embodied in the body of Christ.

The embodiment of Christ in the city must reflect the humble example of Jesus’ authority, which is best embodied as an act of servanthood on behalf of others. As Yoder explains:

Servanthood is not a position of nonpower or weakness. It is an alternative mode of power. It is also a way to make things happen, also a way to be present. When we turn from coercion to persuasion, from self-righteousness to service, this is not a retreat but an end run. It brings to bear powers which, on balance, are stronger than the sword alone.15

Jesus’ incarnation required his emptying himself of the privileges of heavenly power and majesty. The act of yielding privilege was not a false humility but an act of true servanthood. This self-emptying, even to the point of death on a cross, is the full expression of God’s love. The incarnation was not a short-term, half-hearted response to the reality of human existence. The practices of the church, therefore, should reflect the genuine humility required by the incarnation. Are Christian communities able and willing to yield privilege in the same manner that Jesus laid down his privilege? In the current context of the American church, power tends to speak more loudly than humility. Prominence in American Evangelicalism tends to focus on success oftentimes based on Western, capitalist concepts.

By measuring success by mostly American values, heroes are created of those who succeed by Western culture’s standards rather than biblical standards that arise out of the example of Jesus’ incarnation. Upward mobility in American society is the norm more than the downward mobility exemplified by the incarnation of Jesus. Pastors and churches that measure up to the American definitions of success become the examples and models for the Evangelical community. Success in an upper-middle-class, white, suburban community in the United States usually entitles American pastors to apply their systems, ideas, and values to a poor, starving, war-torn nation with the same expectation of material success.16 The true value of the incarnation, the process of yielding power and privilege, gets lost in the process of grabbing for material success.

American churches tend to reinforce a system of privilege. The power of the body of Christ is the capacity to go against the existing power structures and to present a counter-cultural model of engagement. The incarnation of Christ offers the model of downward mobility, which becomes the model of engagement for the urban body of Christ. How can urban churches engage in downward mobility? Our attitude and mindset should be the same as Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a human being, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross. (Phil 2:5–8)

The church, therefore, should maintain an attitude of humility that would prioritize the needs of the community and neighborhood over its own needs—the same attitude that led Jesus to go to extreme lengths in order to be a part of the lives of the other—even to the point of total self-sacrifice. The church in the city should engage in the practice of downward mobility through the proactive and thoughtful sharing of their resources with the community. Given the example of Jesus, the church could do no less than engage in the corresponding act of self-sacrifice.

The Incarnation as Being-With

The drastic and humble act of downward mobility reveals the depth of love required by God towards his children. At the heart of the incarnation is God’s deliberate movement towards us. God is expressing his desire to be in our midst, because he enjoys being in our midst. It is the undeserved work of grace that operates as the fullness of God’s love. To use the language of Sam Wells and Marcia Owen, it is the sense of God wanting to be with us. “The incarnation marks the moment when God’s mode of presence moves definitively from being for to being with.”17 If the act of incarnation is seen as part of God’s supreme sacrifice, then the motivation of incarnation is God’s desire to be with his children. Jesus’ life, therefore, is not only seen in light of his actions, but also in light of the desire that underlies his actions.

Jesus’ example reveals the ongoing act of self-sacrifice for the sake of his relationship with us. As Wells and Owen describe:

He spent thirty years in Nazareth being with us, setting aside plans and strategies, and experiencing in his own body not just the exile and oppression of the children of Israel living under the Romans but also the joy and sorrow of family and community life. We don’t know the details of this period, but that silence all the more suggests it was not a time of major working with or working for, with whose narration the Gospel writers are largely concerned.18

One of the key expressions of the body of Christ in the city is the living with and the working with the people of the city. The Christian understanding of the incarnation of Jesus often glosses over a significant part of the story. A potential misinterpretation of the Scriptures is to argue from silence. One of the key ways that the argument from silence is employed is the silence afforded the thirty years of Jesus’ life prior to his public ministry. Scripture’s silence about Jesus’ pre-ministry years has meant that Christians may see those years as irrelevant. A common assumption would be that there would be more of a public record if Jesus’ life prior to his last three years were significant years. The argument from silence would project that the Scripture’s silence means that the mundane and everyday portion of Jesus’ life has little to no importance. Incarnation, however, requires that we walk alongside the other in the everyday aspects of life. God is found not only in the signs, wonders, and miracles of Jesus’ ministry years, but also in the mundane life of being a carpenter in a small town in Palestine. The body of Jesus is found in the midst of the mundane.

The tendency in urban ministry is to gravitate towards the fantastic success stories. Urban ministry conferences consistently highlight the story of the drug addict who got clean, the welfare mom who is now earning big bucks, and the urban pastor who orchestrated the whole thing. Dostoevsky’s story of the Grand Inquisitor reveals the desire of the masses to hear the fantastic stories.19 Henri Nouwen writes about one of the key temptations of Jesus being the temptation to grab attention with a pyrotechnic display of power.20 But understanding the incarnation is about moving deeper into the life of Jesus to see the work of God in its mundane aspects. The incarnation, therefore, requires the living with to be not only in the places of success but also in the mundane, everyday aspects of life, even the painful and suffering aspects.

The motivation of the incarnation, therefore, challenges the church in its practice of ministry in the urban context. Because the body of Jesus incarnate in the world reflects a desire to be with us, the body of Christ’s incarnation in the city should reflect a desire to be with the people of the city. The motivation to serve the city arises not out of a messianic expectation of triumphant victory over the city but the real benefit of being a companion to the poor and a friend to the citizens of the city. “Being with disadvantaged people means experiencing in your own life something of what it is to be disempowered and oppressed. It means setting aside your plans and strategies for change, and simply feeling with disadvantaged people the pain of their situation.”21 Wells and Owen describe the incarnation of the body of Christ among the poor as the full embodiment of God’s people in the city. Incarnation is not only for the benefit of the city, but also for the benefit of the body of Christ.

Underlying the church’s desire to become a companion to the poor in the city is the recognition that God is already present and at work in the urban community. Incarnation, therefore, must be understood in the context of the missio Dei. The term missio Dei arises from the understanding of God’s preexisting and ongoing mission in the world. “Mission is, primarily and ultimately, the work of the Triune God, Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier, for the sake of the world, a ministry in which the church is privileged to participate.”22 From the very beginning, it has been God at work reaching out to lost humanity. God’s voice ringing out, “Where are you?” in the Garden of Eden is a reminder that God pursues and looks for us. “Mission is the result of God’s initiative, rooted in God’s purposes to restore and heal creation.”23 When we consider the role of the church in the city, we must acknowledge that God’s plan of redemption has been at work before the church even existed.

Acts 10 provides an example of God’s preexisting work in the life of Cornelius before the “missionary” makes his appearance. The Apostle Peter is hesitant to minister to Cornelius, a Roman centurion. Peter is dealing with an underlying sense of superiority because of his Jewish identity. But God had already been at work in Cornelius’s life. Not only had Cornelius been seeking God through his generosity, but God himself had already appeared to Cornelius. God, therefore, communicates to Peter: “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean” (Acts 10:15). When Peter does come to minister to Cornelius, he recognizes that God had already been at work and recognizes that these Gentile believers will receive the same baptism as the Jewish believers. “Then Peter began to speak: ‘I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts those from every nation who fear him and do what is right’ ” (Acts 10:34–35). God’s mission was being fulfilled among the Gentiles and Peter was allowed to participate in the mission of God. If mission is God’s work, then God’s plan is manifest not only in those being sent out into the city, but God is already at work within those in the city.24

The incarnation of the body of Christ in the city, therefore, means that the church recognizes the preexisting work of God in the city. The introduction of a new church body into the body of the city requires the permission of the host community. The preexisting work of the body of Christ must be acknowledged and honored. The incarnation of the church in the city is not an invasion based upon assumptions of cultural superiority but a seeking of how God is already at work in the community. As Wells states:

In learning how to proclaim the faith to a local culture, the Church discovers the signs and signals of its neighbourhood, and can rediscover the significance of the universality of the gospel while appreciating the particularity of the incarnation. . . . There is also an analogy between one’s understanding of the role of the church in a neighbourhood, the leader in a church, and the perception of God’s activity in the world.25

The incarnation acknowledges the preexisting work of God that prepares the city to receive the ongoing work of God.

Incarnation as Suffering

Our first two categories seem to reflect a chronological, even a linear understanding of the incarnation. We see God’s motivation for the act of incarnation and see the corresponding act of downward mobility to fulfill that motivation. However, understanding the incarnation requires comprehension of its full range of actions and motivations. The motivation to make his dwelling among us is a critical one, but the incarnation must also be seen in light of the cross, as well as the resurrection, ascension, and triumphant return. Incarnation without an eye towards the cross is naïve. The incarnation of Jesus points towards the fullness of his work in the world.

The outworking of the entirety of God’s plan required the incarnation. Not only because he wanted to draw close to us, make his dwelling among us, and to call us his friends but because the incarnation created the possibility of the full work of Christ. God wanting to “be with us” is not unrelated to God wanting to “work for us.” God’s work for us required not only the downward mobility of the incarnation, but also the suffering of the cross. The purpose of the incarnation, therefore, must be seen in its full widescreen reality. The incarnation is the declarative statement that God’s plan of redemption has begun. The movement of God is the movement from heaven to earth, but it is also the movement from the manger to the cross and to the empty tomb.

Because the understanding of Christ’s incarnation must encompass the suffering of Jesus at the cross, the body of Christ in the city must be willing to engage and even experience suffering. Shusaku Endo reflects on a non-Western approach to the incarnation which does not focus on triumphalism. The incarnation moves towards suffering and the model and example of suffering that is expected of the church. Endo states,

The religious mentality of the Japanese is—just as it was at the time when the people accepted Buddhism—responsive to one who “suffers with us” and who “allows for our weakness,” but their mentality has little tolerance for any kind of transcendent being who judges humans harshly, then punishes them. In brief, the Japanese tend to seek in their gods and buddhas a warm-hearted mother rather than a stern father . . . , the kind-hearted maternal aspect of God revealed to us in the personality of Jesus.26

Endo’s description of Jesus focuses on not only an incarnation that is a being with but also a suffering with. The work of the incarnation is both the work of suffering for us and suffering with us. “On every page of the Gospels we see an image of Jesus trying to share in all the sorrows of misfortunate men and women.”27 The incarnate body of Christ is the suffering body of Christ in the city.

Conclusion

Western history and philosophy’s abstraction of the city results in the perception of the city apart from its material importance. The church relates to the metaphorical city in abstractions rather than concrete practices. Theological motifs such as the incarnation are applied haphazardly with a range of options for the Christian engaged in urban ministry. If the city is viewed in its material worth with a direct connection to actual human bodies as Sennett suggests, the response of the church is rooted in the concrete reality of the incarnation. The concrete reality of the incarnation should result in actual practices for the ongoing incarnation of Christ, which is the church. Recognizing that the incarnation requires downward mobility calls the church in the city to seek opportunities for self-emptying, humility, power-yielding, and servanthood. Acknowledging that the motivation for the incarnation is the desire to be in community and relationship with the other should lead the church to practice depth in human relationships and to see God already at work in the life of the city. And finally, since the incarnation moves towards the cross, the church is called to embrace rather than shun suffering. While there is still significant latitude in how the theology of the incarnation can be applied to the body of Christ, we can begin to see the foundational principles and practices that help to define the church in the city as the ongoing incarnation of the body of Christ.

Soong-Chan Rah is the Milton B. Engebretson Associate Professor of Church Growth and Evangelism at North Park Theological Seminary, Chicago, IL.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aristotle. Politics: A Treatise on Government. Translated by William Ellis. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1912. The Project Gutenberg EBook edition. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/6762/6762-h/6762-h.htm#2H_4_0004.

Augustine. City of God. Translated by Henry Bettenson. New York: Penguin, 1972.

Bakke, Ray, and Jim Hart. The Urban Christian: Effective Ministry in Today’s Urban World. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1987.

Bosch, David J. Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission. American Society of Missiology Series 16. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1991.

Bretherton, Luke. Christianity and Contemporary Politics: The Conditions and Possibilites of Faithful Witness. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.

Cox, Harvey. The Secular City: Secularization and Urbanization in Theological Perspective. New York: Macmillan, 1965.

Dougherty, James. The Fivesquare City: The City in the Religious Imagination. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1980.

Ellul, Jacques. The Presence of the Kingdom. Translated by Olive Wyon. New York: Seabury, 1967.

Endo, Shusaku. A Life of Jesus. Translated by Richard Schuchert. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1978.

Gordon, Wayne. Real Hope in Chicago: The Incredible Story of How the Gospel Is Transforming a Chicago Neighborhood. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995.

Guder, Darrell, ed. Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America. The Gospel and Our Culture Series. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998.

Nouwen, Henri. In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership. New York: Crossroad, 1989.

Phillips, Michael. “In Swaziland, U.S. Preacher Sees His Dream Vanish.” The Wall Street Journal, December 19, 2005.

Rah, Soong-Chan. Many Colors: Cultural Intelligence for a Changing Church. Chicago: Moody, 2011.

Sennett, Richard. Flesh and Stone: The Body and the City in Western Civilization. New York: Norton, 1994.

Ward, Graham. Cities of God. Radical Orthodoxy. New York: Routledge, 2000.

Wells, Samuel. Improvisation: The Drama of Christian Ethics. Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2004.

Wells, Samuel, and Marcia Owen. Living without Enemies: Being Present in the Midst of Violence. Resources for Reconciliation. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2011.

________. “Ministry on an Urban Estate.” Lecture presented at The National Readers’ Course, Duke University, Durham, NC, August 2001.

White, Randy. Journey to the Center of the City: Making a Difference in an Urban Neighborhood. Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1996.

Wilkinson, Bruce. The Prayer of Jabez: Breaking Through to the Blessed Life. Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 2000.

Yoder, John Howard. For the Nations: Essays Evangelical and Public (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997.

________. The Politics of Jesus: Vicit Agnus Noster. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972.

________. Preface to Theology: Christology and Theological Method. Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2002.

In examining the city, we examine ourselves and our capacity for cultivating communities of belonging in urban contexts. Through seeing the city as a cultural and theological text, critical engagement with urban literacy focuses on reading for themes of density, diversity, and disparity. In dialogue with Seattle’s Rainier Valley, the process of theological reflection on the nature of place, neighbor, and community moves the church in the city into participation with the missio Dei.

What is the city?

How can the city become a place of shalom, where its disparate inhabitants understand that their peace and prosperity are bound to one another?1 And how can the church be an agent of this divine wholeness and mutuality in the city? In various ways, these questions have preoccupied my research and involvement in the city for years. Unfortunately, defining the term city is deceptively complex. Part of this complexity comes from the fact that “scholarship devoted to the city has yet to find a commonly accepted definition of either a city or the city. The diversity of cities makes such a question extremely difficult.”2 What, then, are we to make of the urban environment that frames so much of our lives?

We may know that a city is comprised of people and places, along with institutions and infrastructure, but as Aristotle noted in his philosophical treatise Politics, “a city . . . is more than the sum of its parts.”3 Beyond the physical geography of settlement space, cities—and their growth, politics, economics, and social influence—are arguably one of the most significant, pervasive cultural realities shaping our world today. As the majority world continues to march inexorably toward an urban future,4 in North America we face issues of urbanization that are both similar to, and distinct from, our global neighbors.

The similarities of cities are rooted in common urban issues: congestion, pollution, segregation, resource allocation, and so forth. But one of the things that makes North American urbanism distinct from its counterparts in the majority world is its virtual invisibility. Whereas the relatively recent and dynamic urban growth in developing contexts has drawn the attention of the world, many North Americans remain largely oblivious to the structures and systems of the city.5 Particular facets of the urban environment become like wallpaper, just a function of the background as we go about our daily routine.

Thus, the location of this grocery store, the length of that freeway, the height of this apartment complex, and the size of that ethnic enclave become little more than incidental geographic realities. Sadly, this lack of critical engagement with the urban environment has been tragic for the church in the city. Particularly as more Christians (especially Evangelicals, a broad tradition of which I am a part) jump on the “missional bandwagon,”6 the hypocrisy of global advocacy without local engagement is glaring.7 As John Perkins, the legendary civil rights advocate and grandfather of Christian Community Development, says, “it’s easy to give out of abundance and help the poor Africans ‘over there.’ But white Christians hesitate to cross the tracks in their own hometown and meet their brothers and sisters on the other side.”8 This hesitation to “cross the tracks,” whether literally or metaphorically, can be traced in some ways to a fear and ignorance about life in the city.

But is the city—in all of its complexity and brokenness—only something to fear? Or worse, a problem to solve or people to “rescue”?

It is assumed by many people that the terms “urban” and “problem” are synonymous, like “urban” and “decay.” There are many things wrong in cities. But the easy juxtaposition of urban with problems and the automatic connection between cities and social ills have become so pervasive that they have clouded our judgment, polluted our language, and infected our analysis. Cities . . . are a mirror of our societies, a part of our economy, an element of our environments. But above all else they are a measure of our ability to live with each other. When we examine our cities, we examine ourselves.9

Ultimately, the city is not only about “us” and “them,” or the many serious problems created by cyclical poverty, class consciousness, and structural racialization, important as those issues may be. Rather, the city is fundamentally about our generative capacity for life together as we imagine and embody places that cultivate communities of belonging instead of exclusion. This cultivating work is central to the vocation of the church. However, before we can realize this vision of the city as a place for human flourishing, the ability to live with each other requires a particular kind of literacy of urban contexts.

Reading the City

Stated succinctly, the city is a cultural text. To see the city as a text simply means that its many facets and features need to be read and interpreted in order to understand its meaning. The art and science of interpreting cultural texts is a whole field of interdisciplinary discourse that cannot be summarized concisely,10 but for the sake of brevity, reading the city as a text essentially means paying close attention to both the whole and the parts of the urban environment as we observe and make sense of its significance. In the same way that a critically engaged reader of Scripture must utilize the tools of biblical exegesis to parse paragraphs, examine contextual details, and reflect on layered metanarratives, so must an astute reader of the city bring thoughtful, critical inquiry to the task of “urban exegesis.”11

Theologian Kevin Vanhoozer, in emphasizing the importance of cultural literacy, says that “Christians must learn to read the signs of the time. . . . Most of us learn to read and write. . . . What we do not learn, however, is cultural literacy: how to ‘read’ and ‘write’ culture. . . . The focus is on reading culture and involves critical engagement, not merely passive consumption.”12 Urban literacy begins with seeing the city as a complex cultural text loaded and layered with meaning. Rather than allowing ourselves to remain passive consumers of the city, dialogical engagement with the urban context calls all city-dwellers to recognize that “the city is a discourse and this discourse is truly a language: the city speaks to its inhabitants, we speak our city, the city where we are, simply by living in it, by wandering through it, by looking at it.”13

As we encounter and become conversant with the city as a cultural text, urban literacy helps us to know what we are looking for as we read and engage urban contexts. In my ongoing reading of the city, I consistently examine three interrelated descriptors of the urban environment: density, diversity, and disparity.14 Density describes the physical context of the built environment in the city, from both a structural and human perspective.15 Diversity describes the varied social context of the city, with an emphasis on race, ethnicity, class, and religion as elements of both social cohesion and division. Disparity describes the economic and political context of the city as density and diversity often work together to accentuate the stark contrasts of wealth and power with the poverty and marginalization that characterize the urban environment.

By overlaying these thematic descriptors on the city, certain spaces and places that rise to the surface accentuate the distinctly urban contours of the city. In other words, reading the city for these themes highlights the cultural texts that exemplify the convergence of density, diversity, and disparity. These cultural texts could be a particular neighborhood, a certain historical event, or a dynamic social movement. However, what matters most in reading these urban texts well is not only being able to interpret them in their particular urban contexts but also being able to “exegete” their meaning in a theological context. How do urban cultural texts help us to reflect on the nature of God, the identity of the church, and the mission of Christian community? The meaning that arises from this reflection is simultaneously social, ethical, and missiological in nature, and, like any complex text, is always multivalent in relationship with the hermeneutics of the reader.

The Columbia City Neighborhood

One such urban cultural text that has shaped a reading of my immediate community is the Columbia City Landmark District, a small but dense commercial area that serves as the social and economic hub of the neighborhood. Contained in a relatively short four-block stretch of Rainier Avenue South, right in the heart of Seattle’s Rainier Valley, the Columbia City Landmark District is on the National Register of Historic Places. Today, quaint storefronts and turn-of-the-century architecture frame each urban block in a seemingly innocuous restoration of this once dilapidated business district. Yet behind the trendy boutiques and new restaurants is a very particular history—one that connotes community pride and successful revitalization for some but class tensions and deep resentment for others. Whenever a neighborhood changes, there are always people on both sides of the change. Developers, investors, business owners, families, and residents interact in a complex, dynamic process that can shift the socioeconomic trajectory of a community, and sometimes evidence of these changes is inscribed in the physical geography of the built environment.

Angie’s Cocktails, a fixture of the “original” Columbia City, was a symbolic tavern of the old neighborhood. Described by some as a classic “dive bar,” Angie’s was a favorite watering hole of local clientele for decades, particularly among the African-American community. With as many surveillance cameras as there were barstools,16 regulars came to shoot pool and enjoy cheap drinks, but for many newcomers in the neighborhood, a few too many incidents of alleged criminal activity damaged the bar’s reputation beyond repair.17 Polarizing perspectives on the controversial bar had long fragmented the community.

In 2000, directly across the street from Angie’s, the opening of the Columbia City Ale House signaled the changing demographics of the community. Offering “fine ales and splendid food” according to their elaborate, full-service menu, the new Ale House catered to a growing population of hipsters and professionals with very different tastes than those of the regulars at Angie’s. Noticeably more upscale and attentive to aesthetics, the Ale House predictably attracts a customer base that is mostly white. And as one might naturally expect, the Angie’s and Ale House crowds do not mix.

To the casual observer, these two bars, one on the west side of Rainier Avenue and the other on the east, are divided by what would appear to be little more than fifty feet of asphalt and sidewalks. But locals know all too well that the cultural, socioeconomic, and historical distance is much greater. In this particular context, Rainier Avenue signifies an invisible boundary that segregates the gentrifiers and upwardly mobile professionals of the future from the humble, working class roots of the past. Both groups are working through these social tensions in the present, but they are doing so independently of one another and on either side of Rainier Avenue.

Despite cohabitating in this dense urban environment, the various barriers between the Angie’s and Ale House groups nearly invalidate their proximity. And as a microcosm of the larger Rainier Valley community, one of the most ethnically and socioeconomically diverse urban areas in the US,18 the apparently peaceful coexistence of people from different backgrounds does not necessarily lead to a truly multicultural community. Instead, in some cases, the density and diversity of Columbia City serves to exacerbate the socioeconomic disparity between various stratifications of the social order. While Southeast Asian immigrants and recently resettled East African refugees lament the closure of a small corner store that sells a seemingly odd combination of halal meats and garden-grown Asian herbs, white gentrifiers cheer the opening of a pricey, all-organic grocer offering artisan foods.

Given the multifaceted complexity of this kind of urban cultural text, what is the meaning—social, theological, or otherwise—of the city in this context? How does reading the city closely help us to make sense of the urban environment for the constructive purposes of cultivating communities of belonging and human flourishing?

Urban Theological Reflection

Noted Christian “urbanologist” Ray Bakke has often said that before we attempt to devise a missiology for the city, we need a theology of the city.19 Too often, eager pastors and practitioners equipped with the best of intentions have rushed to strategize about urban ministry programs without any robust ontology of the city. But how can we design and implement effective urban ministries without a theological understanding of what exactly the city is? Unfortunately, these strategic efforts often fall short due to any number of oversights and misunderstandings, ranging from unintentional cultural paternalism to an underestimation of the entrenched nature of structural challenges in urban systems.

In conjunction with Bakke’s merited admonition, it is also true that good missiology has a deep theological foundation in the identity of a sending God and the ecclesial community of a sent people. With its proper orientation around the missio Dei, urban missiology that takes the city seriously must first begin to unpack the theological—and therefore missiological—meaning of density, diversity, and disparity in the urban context.

This abbreviated urban contextual theology20 will simply trace the contours of density, diversity, and disparity by reflecting on the nature of place, neighbor, and community in the city. Each of these reflections is dialogical in nature in the sense that urban contexts do not dictate theological discourse in a systematic fashion. Instead, like all cultural texts, the city conveys a plurality of meanings, and the role of theological reflection is to enter into the discourse of the city with both contextual considerations of complex anthropological realities and a strong sense of the deep wells of the Christian tradition.

Density and Place

The particularities of the Columbia City neighborhood—its people, history, character, geography—reinforce the unique nature of place in the city. As people humanize urban space, it becomes a particular place in the same way that a family’s memories make the space of a house into a place called home. The full dimensionality of “place” is much more than the physical mechanics of geography or sensory perception of one’s surroundings.21 “ ‘Place’ is one of the trickiest words in the English language, a suitcase so overfilled one can never shut the lid. It carries the resonance of homestead, location, and open space in the city as well as a position in a social hierarchy.”22 Thus we can speak of physically “going to this or that place,” socially “knowing your place” in a relational context, and existentially “understanding our place in the world” all in the same sentence. A theology of place in the urban context must see this multifaceted nature of place as more than just theologically neutral territory.

Unfortunately, the concept of place in the frenetic urban environment of Western society is largely a pragmatic, consumer-driven idea often motivated by little more than comfort or convenience. The places where we live, work, worship, shop, and play reflect projected images of a class-conscious “lifestyle” with little to no awareness of the ethics of place, the patterns of structural inequality, or the politics of fear in the city. Urban density, it seems, is just so inconvenient and unappealing. Is it any surprise that our churches have largely departed from the city for greener pastures?

For the past two decades . . . we have been abandoning our strategic locations within city cores and traditional neighborhoods, and we have tried to create for ourselves a new kind of society in the form of suburban megachurches. And as individual Christians, we have marched right along with the rest of our culture and moved our homes outside of the urban core into the sanitized world of the suburbs. Even when we have not participated directly in this radical shift, we have come to view the particularities of functioning in the midst of the city (restricted parking, unsympathetic neighbors, and pushy transients) as inconveniences rather than as opportunities for ministry. . . . Unfortunately, if we were to take a hard look at how Christians in this country have come to view their cities, we would have to conclude that our views have not necessarily been shaped by the Bible, prayer, or meaningful discussions among fellow Christians. It might be more accurate to say that the fear of cities, or the fear of one another, or possibly the love of convenience has been the actual basis of much of our current perceptions about the city.23

Jacobsen’s conviction that the church has succumbed to fear and comfort over compassion and service is a timely critique for a self-focused, therapeutic Christianity. Generally viewed as a place of congestion, inconvenience, crime, and immorality, the urban context has too often become a place to avoid, not a place—as the prophet Jeremiah admonished exiled Israel— to “seek the peace (shalom) of the city” (Jer 29:7; author’s translation).

However, urban density is not only a problem to be solved, or an inconvenience to overcome. Density in the city confronts North American individualism and privacy and helps people to see that public places in the city, when truly shared and stewarded by a neighborhood, can help to cultivate communities of trust and mutual care. Density may force us to encounter “the Other” and to begin to see the imago Dei in all people in surprising and refreshing ways. Though segregation and fear persist in my neighborhood, there are also signs of hope. Columbia Park, built over an old dumping ground, is just two blocks from where Angie’s was recently closed. On a good day, it’s a place where people are moving from co-residents to becoming neighbors as children play together, families enjoy the farmers’ market, and friends gather to share a meal under the shade of an evergreen.

Diversity and Neighbor(ing)

“The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood” (John 1:14; msg). Eugene Peterson’s well known paraphrase of this memorable introduction in the first chapter of John’s Gospel is more than just a clever rewording of this incarnational doctrine. That God chooses to dwell among us and become our neighbor is a powerful biblical metaphor that must inform our praxis as we strive to love our neighbors as ourselves. Though “neighbor” is traditionally a more static category of people, this theological concept of “neighboring” in the city is a dynamic verb of action and engagement.

In the parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10, the passage opens with an abrupt interaction between Jesus and an expert in the law about what must be done to inherit eternal life. It is important to recognize that the qualification of faithfulness to the Shema (Deut 6:4-9) that is outlined by the lawyer and affirmed by Jesus is portrayed in an intentionally active light. The discussion is not merely theological and propositional; it is by definition connected to the concrete reality of neighboring in the world. “That the practice of God’s word is the central issue in this narrative unit is obvious from the repetition and placement of the verb ‘to do.’ . . . In this way the first segment of this unit (vv 25-28) is bound together with references to praxis.”24

The defensive question “And who is my neighbor?” that the lawyer poses to Jesus is one of justification and avoidance. But Jesus replies with a radical narrative of countercultural neighboring, one in which traditional cultural categories were shattered in favor of a different definition of neighbor. After the priest and the Levite had failed to intervene on behalf of the beaten man, “the audience may well have expected the third character in the story to be an Israelite layman, thereby giving an anti-clerical point to the
story. . . . Jesus, however, deliberately speaks of a member of a community hated by the Jews.”25

Jesus’ unexpected inclusion of a Samaritan in the story is a turn that surely would have shocked his listeners. Nonetheless:

What distinguishes this traveler from the other two is not fundamentally that they are Jews and he is a Samaritan, nor is it that they had high status as religious functionaries and he does not. What individualizes him is his compassion, leading to action, in the face of their inaction. . . . The parable of the compassionate Samaritan thus undermines the determination of status in the community of God’s people on the basis of ascription, substituting in its place a concern with performance, the granting of status on the basis of one’s actions.26

Over against all the other social and cultural identifiers at work in this context, compassionate action is what differentiates the Samaritan and defines him as a good neighbor.

That a nameless Samaritan—perceived as less than fully human by many first-century Jews—embodies a Christlike ethic of love and service to neighbor should call into question the ways in which racialization and class consciousness have accentuated the segregation of neighbors in the urban context. Diversity in the city is an opportunity for Christians to see the unique particularities of their neighbors as a vital, indispensable contribution to the wholeness of the community.

Angie’s and the Ale House represent disparate communities that are in fact bound to one another. Though race remains as a deeply problematic barrier in this context, the city can become a place where communities move “from exclusion to embrace.”27 Angie’s closure is in fact an opportunity for people in the neighborhood, especially those committed to the work of reconciliation, to create a new and hospitable place for neighboring together in friendship.

Disparity and Community

The ubiquity of socioeconomic disparity in the city has conditioned people to accept the stark contrasts between the rich and the poor (and the powerful and powerless) as inevitable, or perhaps even necessary. In Columbia City, residents in million-dollar homes look across the street at government-subsidized public housing, while wealthy, single professionals wait in line for groceries behind a family surviving on food stamps. Is this kind of disparity “just the way it has to be”?

If the church is to become a community of belonging both for and with its diverse neighbors in the urban context, then it must consider ethics of redistribution that effectively model care and concern for the poor. Unless the church is able to truly see the poor as neighbors to whom it is accountable, people will not understand the heart of the Prophets and the importance of economic justice for the marginalized in the eyes of God. Until the church is willing to see “poverty as a scandalous condition,”28 the community of faith will not fully grasp the deep compassion of YHWH revealed in the righteous anger of Amos, the indignant admonitions of Isaiah, and the somber laments of Jeremiah.

To be a Christian community that practices redistribution is not to adhere blindly to human models of economics that preclude private ownership or wield an authoritarian rule. Rather, to be a generous and hospitable Christian community is to seek the heart of God in the fair and equitable treatment of the poor so that the whole people of God, and not just those with economic means or political resources, will be able to live under the gracious care of a generous, reconciling God. The church must model this kind of community, especially in the urban context, where the exploitative market forces of gentrification and unrestrained capitalism too often run rampant, deepening socioeconomic disparities and trampling on the poor in the process.

A steadfast devotion to communal economic justice is perhaps the most prophetic and countercultural commitment the church can make in an age of unbounded hyper-consumerism. Becoming a community of redistribution flies in the face of a society where cutthroat social Darwinism, left to its own devices, would have us all chasing after “the wealth of nations”29 at any cost. Moreover, Christian redistribution is not simply about taking resources from the “hardworking haves” and giving them to the “nonworking have-nots”; quite to the contrary, it is about sharing that with which we have been entrusted as stewards and giving back “to God what is God’s” (Mark 12:13-17; niv).

As Columbia City continues to undergo significant economic changes with an influx of new wealth, questions about displacement of the poor are ongoing. In a neighborhood that has known socioeconomic disparity for much of its history, the role of the church as an inclusive, bridge-building community is increasingly important. Making room at the table and extending hospitality to those on the margins is the church’s Eucharistic offering to the city.

Conclusion

Density, diversity, and disparity in the city make for interesting urban reading. As critically engaged interpreters of cultural texts, the church must see the city in all of its complexity, brokenness, and beauty. It is important to remember that the ministry of place-making, reconciliation, and communal justice is always participatory and collaborative. We participate with the missio Dei as image bearers of the divine community, and we collaborate with our neighbors as co-learners. And along the way, the church in the city lives into its vocation as a called and sent people.

It is a healthy reminder:

Christianity entered history as a new social order, or rather a new social dimension. From the very beginning Christianity was not primarily a “doctrine,” but exactly a “community.” There was not only a “Message” to be proclaimed and delivered, and “Good News” to be declared. There was precisely a New Community, distinct and peculiar, in the process of growth and formation, to which members were called and recruited. Indeed, “fellowship” (koinonia) was the basic category of Christian existence.30

May the bold witness and compassionate care of the church continue to grow this fellowship into the city and beyond.

David Leong, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Missiology at Seattle Pacific University where he directs the Global and Urban Ministry Program in the School of Theology. He can be contacted at leongd@spu.edu.

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