This world -oriented procalamation is essential to RO, for RO is not intended to be just an interior – albeit prophetic – monolgue within the church. Rather , it is intended to motivate a kerygmatic engagement with contemporary culture

RO is advocating a distinctly theological engagement with the world– and the academy that investigates this world—undergirded by the belief that the way to engage the contemporary world is not by trying to demonstrate a correlation between the gospel and cultural values but rather by letting the gospel confront these (apostate) values

OK, here we’re getting to the crux, I think, of Smith’s problem with Wallis. And I say, hold on. While I am intrigued and even open to the direction I see this headed, give people a chance Jamie, to look through this lense. I hadn’t really considered, at this depth. these somewhat meticulous angles on theology engaging with culture (which amounts, as I understand it so far, as “letting the gospel do its own confronting”.) I’m not sure what that means yet, but that aside, I am yet to see anything that seems to justify calling Wallis a “Contantinian of the Left”.

This seems to be in need of the kind of discussion Hauerwas has given us about how the Bible should be taken away from North American Christians until they learn how to read it, which is in community and within the story which a tradition reads it from. How do we “let the gospel confront those values” (ie. “values of the world; cultural values”). Isn’t just “letting the gospel” confront it sounding like saying nothing and letting the gospel “stand for what it is”? Isn’t this a problem with the Christian Right assuming that “the gospel is what it is and says what it says”, and then “what it says” is in actuality nothing more than a baptized Americanism; a “true Constantinianism”

So what exactly does a “theologically funded reflection on the world” look like? (ceding thepoint that there is more detail ahead in the book, but I’m just letting you in on my impressions as I read) It ssemes to me at this point that although I can not and don’t want to disagree with that, since I know it must be out there somewhere , or within revelation, just who IS “funding” this at bottom? Whose framework is this? I have the same feeling (although less scary) anout this as I do when I hear somebody say they have a “Biblical worldview”. Most people I hear saying that have a pretty modernist and Constantinian worldview that they claim is THE BIBLICAL view. Although I would sooner trust one of the RO originator folks with determining what that is than the likes of say, Al Mohler (who certainly has one, or so he says) or Jerry Falwell or George Bush for that matter —or Osama Bin Laden—-I am curious as to how this study will construct that “currency which funds” this enterprise.