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Honor, Shame, and the Gospel: Reframing Our Message and Ministry
An Honorific Biblically Faithful & Culturally Relevant...Christians engaged in communicating the gospel navigate a challenging faithfulness to God's ancient, revealed Word-and relevance to the local, current social context. What if there was a lens or paradigm offering both? Understanding the Bible-particularly the gospel-through the ancient cultural "language" of honor-shame offers believers this double blessing.
In Honor, Shame, and the Gospel, over a dozen practitioners and scholars from diverse contexts and fields add to the ongoing conversation around the theological and missiological implications of an honorific gospel. Eight illuminating case studies explore ways to make disciples in a diversity of social contexts-for example, East Asian rural, Middle Eastern refugee, African tribal, and Western secular urban.
Honor, Shame, and the Gospel provides valuable resources to impact the ministry efforts of the church, locally and globally. Linked with its ancient honor-shame cultural roots, the gospel, paradoxically, is ever new-offering fresh wisdom to Christian leaders and optimism to the church for our quest to expand Christ's kingdom and serve the worldwide mission of God.
In Honor, Shame, and the Gospel, over a dozen practitioners and scholars from diverse contexts and fields add to the ongoing conversation around the theological and missiological implications of an honorific gospel. Eight illuminating case studies explore ways to make disciples in a diversity of social contexts-for example, East Asian rural, Middle Eastern refugee, African tribal, and Western secular urban.
Honor, Shame, and the Gospel provides valuable resources to impact the ministry efforts of the church, locally and globally. Linked with its ancient honor-shame cultural roots, the gospel, paradoxically, is ever new-offering fresh wisdom to Christian leaders and optimism to the church for our quest to expand Christ's kingdom and serve the worldwide mission of God.
252 pages, Paperback
Published October 27, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 12, 2023
Every one of these multi-contributor works has stronger and weaker chapters.
There were some useful chapters in this work. Steven Hawthorn and Randolph Richards both did a fine job of showing the way honor/shame dynamics are a central thread of Scripture (Hawthorn) and a significant factor in the human cultural impulses recorded in Scripture (Richards). Jackson Wu had some useful exegetical observations, Jayson Georges does a fine job in showing the prevalence of honor/shame in the exegesis of past Christians. All these are useful as a sort of introduction to the notion of honor and shame.
Maybe the best chapter was Arley Loewen's consideration of how the Christian virtue of humility can work/fit in an honor driven culture. Loewen does a great job of showing himself under Scripture, and understanding of how honor works. He shows how the two can conflict with each other, but rightly understood, make something better.
But there are also chapters here where: A- the notion of honor/shame seemed new to the contributor themselves. Some (like Thigpen) only spoke of shame as negative, something to avoid, treating it as nothing more than embarrassment. Others used the notion of honor shame as basically an argument that the solution to Christians uncritically conforming to Western cultural practices is for Christians to uncritically conform to Easter cultural practices.
B- Some of the chapters that contributed the most exegetically were also undermined by immature, impatient critiques of Western Christianity that to me more about the contributor's poor church life than it did about what 'Western evangelicalism' needs to do.
C- Some contributors who clearly had a different understanding of the gospel, and of the reliability of the Scriptures, even on questions of morality also muddled things.
Some chapters had good potential. But the divergent agendas of the different contributors were not reigned in enough to give this book a coherent argument. Because of that, I fear it will be limited in helping Western Christians understand how honor/shame dynamics are in the Bible as well as limited in helping Christians relate to each other in ways that truly respect and honor each others cultures. If you're looking for that, go read 'Defending Shame' by Te-Li Lau instead.
There were some useful chapters in this work. Steven Hawthorn and Randolph Richards both did a fine job of showing the way honor/shame dynamics are a central thread of Scripture (Hawthorn) and a significant factor in the human cultural impulses recorded in Scripture (Richards). Jackson Wu had some useful exegetical observations, Jayson Georges does a fine job in showing the prevalence of honor/shame in the exegesis of past Christians. All these are useful as a sort of introduction to the notion of honor and shame.
Maybe the best chapter was Arley Loewen's consideration of how the Christian virtue of humility can work/fit in an honor driven culture. Loewen does a great job of showing himself under Scripture, and understanding of how honor works. He shows how the two can conflict with each other, but rightly understood, make something better.
But there are also chapters here where: A- the notion of honor/shame seemed new to the contributor themselves. Some (like Thigpen) only spoke of shame as negative, something to avoid, treating it as nothing more than embarrassment. Others used the notion of honor shame as basically an argument that the solution to Christians uncritically conforming to Western cultural practices is for Christians to uncritically conform to Easter cultural practices.
B- Some of the chapters that contributed the most exegetically were also undermined by immature, impatient critiques of Western Christianity that to me more about the contributor's poor church life than it did about what 'Western evangelicalism' needs to do.
C- Some contributors who clearly had a different understanding of the gospel, and of the reliability of the Scriptures, even on questions of morality also muddled things.
Some chapters had good potential. But the divergent agendas of the different contributors were not reigned in enough to give this book a coherent argument. Because of that, I fear it will be limited in helping Western Christians understand how honor/shame dynamics are in the Bible as well as limited in helping Christians relate to each other in ways that truly respect and honor each others cultures. If you're looking for that, go read 'Defending Shame' by Te-Li Lau instead.
March 21, 2021
I enjoyed some of the essays more than others. I particularly enjoyed "The Shaming of Jesus in John" (chapter 5).
December 11, 2020
What is honor? What is shame? How does each of them relate to the Gospel and ministry? A collection of essays edited by Flanders and Mischke provide a number of responses to these questions, each response coming from a different theological perspective or ministry context. All the responses combined emphasize the importance of the topic of "honor and shame" and reveal some unexpected ways how understanding this topic can aid a minister or a theologian. Whether it is in San Francisco or in the frontiers of Muslim countries, there are hidden expectations that the knowledge of shame and honor can address to benefit the spread of the Good News. A theologian and minister who works in any culture, or sub-culture, will find fresh ideas and challenging topics in this book.
February 26, 2022
Some of the essays are excellent, but the quality is uneven. Fundamental difficulty if this book lies in the lack of consensus on the definition of shame. For example, although some (like Wu) considers shame as an essential and good emotion which points us towards God, few essays view shame as a malice to be avoided. It would have been better if the book started with an overall biblical framework of shame relating to theological anthropology and hamartology, which subsequent essays could build upon.
May 11, 2022
This is an engaging book about honor and shame. A really diverse selection of essays that are widely applicable. I'll definitely be going back to this book for academic needs and ministry needs alike.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews