A Faith of Many Rooms: Inhabiting a More Spacious Christianity (Debie Thomas) - A Review
A FAITH OF MANY ROOMS: Inhabiting a More Spacious Christianity. By Debie Thomas. Minneapolis, MN: Broadleaf Books, 2024. 184 pages.
Too often Christians live in theologically cramped
dwellings, with little room to move or welcome others into the dwelling place.
As a result, we often fail to truly understand God's gracious and welcoming
nature. Therefore, we need reminders that Jesus was and is a welcoming person.
We see this in his eating habits and messages of love and mercy. If this is
true then it is appropriate that our theologies reflect the openness that Jesus
exhibited as he revealed the nature of God in and through his life, death, and
resurrection. Fortunately, some people and communities embrace a spacious
Christianity.
If you seek a more open and
"spacious" Christianity, then you will be blessed if they choose to
read Debie Thomas's A Faith of Many Rooms. This book is a beautifully
written and compelling exploration of a spacious Christianity. The author,
Debie Thomas, brings her own spiritual journey into the conversation. She
shares this message of a “more spacious Christianity” by bringing into the
conversation her background as an Indian American Christian. Born into an
evangelical family today Thomas is an Episcopalian, serving as a minister at
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Palo Alto, California. She is a columnist for
the Christian Century and author of Into the Mess and other Jesus
Stories.
Although Thomas is Protestant,
having been raised in Protestant churches in India and the United States (her
father was a pastor serving both predominantly white and Indian congregations),
she traces her spiritual roots much further back in time, to the faith
community planted in her ancestral homeland of Kerala in Southern India. It is
there, in Southern India that St. Thomas is said to have ministered and, in the
end, martyred for his faith. As such, her first language as a child was the Malayalam
language. It is Thomas' story of doubt and service that permeates Thomas' book.
This is a book about belonging.
Thomas begins by introducing the reader to the word Nadhe, a word that
is treasured by her immigrant family, a word roughly translated as birthplace,
mother country, heart of belonging, or home. It is a word that brings to mind
her ancestry in a region where she was born, but from which her family
immigrated shortly thereafter. Nevertheless, though Thomas grew up in Boston,
she spent many summers in Kerala. Therefore, this ancestral homeland serves as
the foundation for her spiritual journey. She speaks in the book about experiencing
dislocation and finding it difficult to belong. This is a situation that she
shares with many bicultural people. In part, this is the story of her journey
to experience a sense of belonging. Of course, it's not just bicultural people
who feel that they don’t belong spiritually, as many others find it difficult
to find a spiritual home, especially as church membership shrinks. So, even as
she shares her own story of seeking that place of belonging, she explores the
changing geography of belief. Thus, part of the story is Thomas's path of discovering
a spiritual home that is different in many ways from the one she inherited.
That inherited faith was, as Thomas shares with us, rather male-centric, patriarchal,
and theologically narrow. She eventually discovered that she did not fit in the
evangelical church of her spiritual origins.
After Thomas provides us with a
lengthy introduction that sets the parameters of the book, Thomas takes us on a
pilgrimage to India. In a chapter titled "A St. Thomas Pilgrimage:
Doubt," we journey to Kerala. At the time Thomas took this pilgrimage, she
was a graduate student in creative writing at Ohio State University, attempting
to write a thesis about her faith. When she took this journey, she was experiencing
a spiritual crisis. As she was in the midst of this crisis, she returned to
"the ancient place that birthed my relationship with God" (p. 13). Therefore,
we travel with her to the Mount of St. Thomas, a place that Indian Christians
consider sacred. On that mountain, there is a giant statue of the founding
saint. At the base of the statue, one finds the words from the Gospel of John,
where Thomas declares of Jesus: "My God, my God." By taking us to
Kerala and this sacred place, we who know the name and biblical story of Thomas
learn something important about the disciple who is best known for his doubts,
a disciple, who according to Tradition, became a missionary and a martyr.
Whether or not the story of Thomas’ ministry in India is factual, it is the
spiritual foundation story for Indian Christians. This is true even if one is
not part of the ancient Mar Thomas church. Therefore, if for no other reason,
this opening chapter is worth the price of the book.
While Kerala is the starting point
on this journey to belonging, there is still much more to the story. Thus, we
move from Kerala and the foundational story of St. Thomas’ ministry to her
immigrant story. Thus, in Chapter 2 we join the family as they first immigrate
to Switzerland, where her father attended seminary. From there the family moved
to the United States, where her father would serve as a pastor. This chapter
draws on Jesus' statement to prospective disciples as a point of orientation.
So we consider Jesus’ statement that the Son of Man has "Nowhere to Lay
His Head." Thomas uses this imagery to describe her own and her family’s
experiences as immigrants. It speaks to the reality of feelings of not
belonging as well as leaving behind past homes, which for her includes leaving
behind her evangelical home. She notes that "much of the Bible is written
by, for, and about wanderers. Clearly, there is something powerful,
instructive, and transformative about leaving home" (p. 40). I sense that
many will resonate with this chapter.
From "leaving" we move in
Chapter 3 "Into the Wilderness: Lost." Here Thomas describes her own
season of wandering in the wilderness and the feeling of being lost. This
season of lostness involves not knowing where one would finally land, while the
feelings concerning what was left behind remain strong. I have heard a number
of my immigrant friends speak of this feeling of lostness and displacement,
that feeling of not quite belonging. The question raised here concerns how one might
experience the life of the pilgrim, such that one holds things lightly as one
continues down a path uncertain as to the destination.
One way of navigating this
spiritual reality is through storytelling. She explores the act of storytelling
in Chapter 4, which is titled "Beyond Belief: Story." She writes that
"Stories hold memory and identity, seasons and secrets, sorrows and joys.
They give our lives texture and depth, roundedness and fullness" (p. 60).
She describes some of the stories that had formed her life, from the Christian
rock music she listened to as a youth to the creed that gave a foundation to
her faith. But she also shares how she resisted other stories that eventually
became hers. She reminds us that belief-centered Christianity isn't necessarily
wrong, but it can be "divorced from our enfleshed and storied lives,"
and thus isn't enough to sustain faith. (p. 65). She writes that the "best
stories affirm that life is complicated, that easy answers rarely satisfy, and
that even the shiniest 'happily ever after' endings exact a price" (p.
71).
In Chapter 5, which is titled
"She Blows Where She Wills: Spirit," Thomas shares her discovery of
the way language and stories function, often in surprising ways. So, in this
chapter, Thomas draws on the story of Pentecost and the gift of the Spirit. She
speaks of the diversity of languages present at Pentecost, such that
"there is no single language, story, creed, or mother tongue on earth that
can fully capture the spaciousness and the hospitality of God" (p. 77).
It's not that all paths are the same or that the differences between faiths are
surface level for they are not. Therefore, she rightly speaks of recognizing
and honoring spiritual differences as being genuine and meaningful. If this is
true, as she believes (and I agree), we can be open about our faith traditions
without trying to make everything look the same. We can share our story as
being meaningful to us and perhaps to others, but following Jesus we don't
engage in manipulation or coercion.
In Chapter 6, titled "Getting
Saved: Sin,” Thomas explores the question of sin. In exploring this concept,
she shares with us how she wrestled for many years with the feeling that she
was a sinner, which led her to strive for acceptance by God and others. She
speaks of living in fear that she was not right with God. Many will resonate
with her description of her past experiences. Thus, she invites us to consider our
own questions as to the nature of sin and salvation. She helpfully points out
that many progressive Christians shy away from dealing with questions as to the
nature of sin and salvation. However, Thomas helpfully writes that "rightly
understood, sin and salvation are precisely the roomy, expansive words we need
to ground our vocations as Christ's hands and feet in a pain-filled world.
Walking away from these core tenets of our faith grants us no more freedom,
spaciousness, resilience, or hope that my anxious childhood sprints to the
altar" (p. 89).
From sin, we move to another topic
that many Christians shy away from, and that is lament, the topic of Chapter 7.
Thomas writes that too often we find it difficult to embrace lament, even
though the Psalms are filled with laments. She notes how in her past she practiced
a grief-averse faith, a faith that ended up being rather shallow. She reminds
us that lament is not faithlessness but is instead an act of faith for in
practicing lament we recognize that things are not yet as they should be. So,
even though we are Easter People, "the Easter stories we cherish in the
Gospels make room for ache, fear, regret, and sorrow" (p. 119).
Earlier in the book, Thomas noted that
the faith she inhabited when she was young was very male-centered. As she
matured spiritually and left behind a narrow evangelicalism, she began to
recognize that women bear the image of God. That is the subject of Chapter 8.
This is the story of Thomas discovering the feminine side of God and what that
means for her as a woman. A roomy church, she suggests, has room for this
message that God is not male, but allows for differing imagery that empowers
rather than restricts. She finds her foundation for embracing her own identity
as a bearer of God's image in the incarnation. Thus, "he takes on the
particular flesh of a first-century itinerant Jewish peasant: poor, colonized,
and criminalized. It is out of this radical specificity that Jesus includes,
embraces, and saves us, in all our specificity" (p. 133).
Finally, we come to Chapter 10:
"Limps and Worms: Wrestling." Here Thomas draws on one of my favorite
biblical stories, the story of Jacob's wrestling match with God. She suggests
that a truly spacious faith needs to allow for spiritually wrestling matches
with God. She writes that "wrestling keeps God relevant in our lives; it
keeps God personal. It makes sure that God remains a force to reckon with
rather than a dusty relic we stick on a shelf." (p. 168). She also
includes the story of Jonah who runs away from God and then finally gives in,
preaches doom, and then gets mad when God doesn't destroy the Ninevites. Thus,
we are left with Jonah wrestling with God's "scandalous compassion and
mercy toward Jonah's sworn enemies."
In her epilogue to A Faith of
Many Rooms, Thomas concludes the story of her spiritual journey toward
inhabiting a more spacious Christianity by affirming that there comes a time
when we will discover a home where we can finally stay put. Therefore, she
writes that she stays a Christian because she found in Christianity the roomy
house where she belongs. As we walk with her, perhaps we will find that we too
belong in that roomy house.
If we know from the start that
Debie Thomas holds an MFA degree in creative writing, it might not surprise us
how fluid and beautifully written Thomas's A Faith of Many Rooms is. While
beautifully written, Thomas also brings exceptional spiritual and theological
insight into the book. I expect that readers will resonate with different parts
of the book, but to illustrate her theological insight, I found that her chapter
on paradox was especially poignant in that she holds together theological
positions that many progressive Christians struggle with, such as the Trinity
or the resurrection of Jesus. At a time when so many people, especially former
evangelicals, are experiencing spiritual deconstruction, Thomas’ vision of a
spacious Christianity may prove inviting. Wherever one is on their spiritual
journey, I believe that Thomas has provided us with a book that can be read and
enjoyed and will provide encouragement as we seek a spiritual home in the kind
of spacious Christianity Thomas describes in A Faith of Many Rooms.
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