Recently picked up Justo L. González' book, Faith and Wealth. I've been a fan of his since reading his two volume 'Story of Christianity' for my mdiv and was excited to get into this, as wealth — and its relationship to both society and faith — is something I think about a fair amount. I'm still in the first chapter, which is looking at several pre-Christian understandings of wealth and I wanted to note something that stood out while reading this morning.

While writing about property ownership, González mentions that a major difference between the Roman legal system and the Jewish one is that under the latter owners of the land were required to offer some of it to the poor. This was called the pe'ah (meaning corner) and included the edges of the field, any fruit that fell to the ground, and anything the harvesters left over after their first pass. There was significant debate over some of the applications of this, but the core of it was that the poor had actual rights to the land that superseded the rights of the owners.

This is a fascinating example to bring into conversations of wealth redistribution and the relationship between private and public; because here we have a public legal framework enforcing the stewardship of private property ownership in a way that upholds a social policy in favour of the poor. It isn't quite common ownership but perhaps more rooted in the idea that we never truly own the land, it is more of a gift that we can share with others.

Reading a book this morning on Christian history from a global perspective that I picked up a while ago and never got around to reading. The focus of the author is to highlight the role of mission and how the tradition grew and formed in its various contexts; as opposed to the usual Eurocentric view that has tended to dominate Christian history. I'll try to layer in some interesting ideas as they emerge.

The major takeaway up front is to be reminded that there is no single, clear trajectory of the Christian tradition; it is something fluid, constantly evolving and recontextualizing for every new time and place. It emerges from lived experience, responses to challenges and controversies, and interactions with other cultural forces. Contextualizing, more than preserving, is the more accurate understanding of the tradition.

What's more, for the first few centuries at least, belonging to the church (in a universal sense) was about relationship rather than adherence to rules or doctrines. Bishops, were meant to be those who could trace their lineage of appointment back to the apostles; sort of like an apprenticeship model that lent credibility to one's leadership. Cyprian's famous quip, "outside the church there is no salvation," is a response to the question of rebaptism by those who were not baptized by bishops who carried the proper lineage credentials.

I guess what I'm getting at here is that we spend a lot of time arguing about what set of beliefs or practices constitute the right version of Christianity but history is rarely that neat and tidy.

Finally got a used copy of Bernadette Devlin's memoir and started reading it over the weekend. I'm just getting started and I'm sure more notes and reflections will come. However, a couple things stood out that I wanted to briefly comment on.

In the forward she acknowledges the protest movement in Northern Ireland of which she is just one small piece. Of her generation of struggle she writes, "we were born into an unjust system; we are not prepared to grow old in it." I love that. It captures both the bigness of the problem as well as the hope needed to keep going in resistance to it. This is the sort of mantra I want for parenting as well; teaching my kids that the world they have inherited is not their mess but it needs to be their fight. And to root themselves in the history of struggle that came before them, people just like Bernadette.

Another thing I wanted to draw attention to is the way she specifically points to her religious upbringing as what helped radicalize her. She writes,

"If it hadn’t been for the fact that I had an essentially Christian background from my mother, poverty would have made me bitter rather than socialist."

There are many, MANY good reasons to turn away from Christianity - both in its present and historical expressions, and I fault no one for doing so - however, there is also a strong legacy of struggle and justice within it. This again speaks to the sort of tradition that I want to raise my kids in. Not the forms of it that are tied to capitalism and colonialism, but to seek truth in the saints who fought for justice on behalf of the most vulnerable and oppressed. This is, in my opinion, the only kind of faith worth having.