Being A Radical Christian -- Simon Barrow

There are Conservative Christians and there are Liberal Christians (better known these days as Progressives), but Simon Barrow of Ekklesia offers another possibility -- Radical Christianity! I think if you read this through you'll find that the Gospel is quite radical and world transforming.


What is radical about Christianity? -Feb 19, 2007 -- by Simon Barrow.

My experience of being a Christian is that of a surprising, continual and contested process of reformation and rediscovery. In the events and narratives concerning Jesus, which remain central to my life, everything I thought I knew about the world, myself, God and humanity turns out to be nothing like what I expected, and indeed finds itself in need of ongoing transformation.
The social and political challenge of the Gospel flows, it seems to me, from its radical core. But ‘radical’ has become something of a dirty word, implying (for many) extremism, intolerance or violence; and (for others) an abandonment of historic commitments. These are distortions of its originating meaning.

By radical (radix, from the Latin) I mean something like ‘rooted-to-be-routed’ – a personal, communal and intellectual re-exploration and re-expression of a deep tradition of reading, reasoning and responding to the world which propels us to its most risky frontiers. That is what is at the heart of Christianity.
Whereas the conservative tends to be oriented to the past, and the liberal tends to regard tradition as baggage or inhibition, the radical seeks to live out of a wisdom which is malleable and resilient enough to go on changing without breaking, and which has a capacity to bring both surprise and coherence in a way that ‘starting from scratch’ cannot.

This is the journey I am on, and it is shaped and sustained not just by a company of the like-minded but by companions from other walks of life (people of faith, or just ‘good faith’), who remind me that isolation and guarantees of ‘correctness’ are not on. (click here to continue reading).

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