Book Review of Radical Discipleship: A Liturgical Politics of the Gospel by Jennifer M. McBride
Radical Discipleship: A Liturgical Politics of the Gospel
by Jennifer M. McBride
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2017). 279 pages. $28.90
McCormick Theological Seminary’s theological ethicist Jennifer McBride does what Dietrich Bonhoeffer did for his generation: she calls the Church to be authentic in its confession of being disciples of Jesus Christ. She does so through a theo-liturgical praxis of journeying through the liturgical calendar that invites us to accompany the milestones of Jesus’s ministry while demonstrating the significance of these markers to the kingdom of God among us. Mcbride narrates how she experienced the living Christ in incarnational ways through the ministries of a women’s prison and an intentional living community called Open Door. In doing so, her account is not as a one-time ethnographic, participant-observer; nor is she is an ivory tower theologian with bold prescriptions. McBride is: a prophetess with a wise word; an apostle sent to learn, serve, witness what she has received and heard; a disciple who radically desires to follow the Spirit of the Lord from and within her place of privilege. She urges those of us who occupy similar places of privilege to follow the Lord by confessing our complicity in the injustice of the world and to be a change agent for God’s transformative justice.
McBride helpfully reminds us North American Christians that the Gospel is inherently social and political. Thus, we as followers of Jesus Christ are called to discern systemic, institutional powers and principalities that stifle people from flourishing and living into the envisioned “beloved community” as described by the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. McBride’s post-doctoral work at Emory connected her to teaching a theology certificate program at a women’s prison and with Open Door, an intentional residential community of erstwhile homeless and incarcerated persons that offers generous hospitality to those neglected by society. McBride witnessed the power of faith, hope, and love within both communities as they taught her what it means to occupy the margins, and the imperative for Christians of privilege to address the distance between the incarcerated/homeless and those outside prison/people of relative wealth. A large part of this effective witness is being in solidarity, lamenting, and protesting the systemic forces that cause and/or contribute to people becoming imprisoned or homeless. Effective witnessing empowers those same persons who are oppressed to shape their own futures in God’s shalom, giving voice to those in struggle, and develops ministries within and/or connected to congregations for vibrant discipleship.
Through discipleship patterned after Christ’s ministry, McBride promotes a community that seeks to reduce the distance between oppressed and privilege people. This discipleship “yearns for the great reversal and enacts public repentance (Advent), performs creative nonviolent resistance to social evil and meets human need (Christmas), turns toward and welcomes harsh and raw realities with compassion and courage (Ordinary Time), laments and rejects moralism (Lent and Holy Week), participates in Jesus’s solidarity with society’s victims (Good Friday), engages others out of a disposition of trust, and witness to the power of life over death and liberation over oppression (Easter),. . .examines the type of communal structure needed to form Christians into disciples who can engage injustice and build right relationships with those who are oppressed” (232-233).
Radical Discipleship is a welcome volume to the scholarship of liturgists, homileticians, preachers, and pastors. This book provides the thrust and meaningful shape of what and why we worship and preach without the use of abstract theology but instead with a living theology where the center and circumference are in mutual conversation. Non-professional theologians are affirmed their rightful place at the theological table, and the lived experiences of the incarcerated and homeless communities serves as the essential correctives to theologizing and ecclesial life that have grown too comfortable with themselves. Radical Discipleship calls us to examine our preaching and the worship life of our congregations and communities: are our sermons, communal liturgical life, and congregation’s sense of mission geared towards the marginalized? Do we critique death-dealing systemic and institutional forces that widen the gap between the oppressed and the privileged while establishing concrete communities of hope and hospitality? Or do our sermons and liturgical life inure people to death and shadows of death? This volume is a jewel that calls us to live out our commitment to love God and to love neighbor together.
