Categories: uncategorized
Date: 01 August 2011 14:19:17
Had an interesting experience being interviewed by somebody in relation to their research today, it got me focusing on ideas of being radical and how they link to religion. During the course of the interview I explained what kind of stuff I'd been involved in that might have been descibed as radical and was linked to discipleship. I realise though, and this wasn't something covered in the interview, that in some ways we are playing with fire using that terminology but at the same time it is the sort of fire that needs reclaiming.
Let me lay this one out for you.
Firstly: I want you to think about what comes to mind when somebody uses the term "radical" in relation to religion. Is it that you automatically think of fundamentalist/ extremist Christian or Islamic sects; the sort of people involved in terrorist atrocities? Unfortunately that is the way the government and others have been teaching us to use the terms over recent years.
Secondly: If somebody was asking you to engage in radical acts because of your faith would you feel comfortable? I want to suggest no, because of the connotations the word radical has.
Yet, and this is where the word but comes in there is lots of talk of radical discipleship - a term which is associated with moderates. Indeed "The Radical Disciple" was written by the late John Stott (to whom many tributes have been paid in the last week, this one from Christianity Today is worth reading). He was a reformer, but a radical...um, I can't quite see it in the terms which it is commonly used today by the world outside.
Often I think we want it both ways as "nice, intellectual, middle-class" Christians. We want to use these terms and engage with them - in our safe sub-cultures where they describe schools of theological thought, etc they are fluffy words we want to own. However, in the real world we don't want to be associated with them because of how we know the wider world percieves them and more important how politicians use them. Radicalism we have been taught is dangerous and to radicalise people on the basis of their religion is what leads to terrorism.
If we want to reclaim these words we are , I suggest, going to have to see how the same characteristics can be seen in those of other faiths and engage with them on the same basis. Islamic radicalism will also have to relate to those groups who are engaging with the poor and working in a positive counter-cultural way because of what their scriptures say.
We have to decide...the words radical and religious are like the term evangelical we need to work out a way for them to be used in the same way inside and outside religious sub-cultures. We need to find ways to make these words attractive and communicate their true healthy meanings, rather than allowing them to be hi-jacked by fundamentalists and extremists and more importantly we need to stop them being terms which are used to demonise and villify others.