in my last post i said what my favourite book i read last year was. well onto my favourite theology book…

i have a weird gig which is being invited to add a comment or endorsement on a book. i should have kept tally over the years of all the books i have done that for. having said it is weird it does always feels an honour to be asked. the weird part is more about why a comment from me helps but hey.

last year i was invited by david benjamin blower to read his manuscript for the messianic commons which is now out. i don’t have it in front of me so i have no idea how much of what i wrote made it onto the book cover inside or out but i wrote a long comment because i thought it was a wonderful book, playful, mischievious even. it’s very original. anyway rather than give a review i thought i’d share my comment. suffice to say david was very pleased with the endorsement. i need to read it again actually. it’s that kind of book.

The theologies and worldviews of modernity with their defended boundaries and borders and vested interests of empire are tired and jaded. No doubt they will keep reasserting themselves and making a lot of noise for a while yet but they are essentially over. We need something genuinely new. The Messianic Commons is an offering into that space. It is fresh, original and timely. I have always loved art that has to remake the world before the art can be accommodated or held. It takes a particular kind of artist to make such work, one whose gifts are in the tradition of poets and prophets. This book  is one of those rare pieces of art, and Blower is one of those rare kinds of artists. The treasure that enables this remaking of the world is what he calls the messianic commons – in choosing that language he is breaking open a tradition so that it can be inhabited generously by all those who long for a better world where all things can be made new and seek to embody it now. He draws deeply and playfully on Jewish and Christian scriptures and indigenous worldviews doing some wonderful theological work. It is a work of prophetic imagination. I found the air I was breathing reading the book felt free.. The book embodies the ideas expressed in it. So it resists polarities, it is open and generous and not enclosed or defended, it slips the trap of offering wholesale solutions, or offering judgements. It gives hints, clues, fragments, stories, practices, imaginings, and invites you in compelling fashion to join the adventure.