Introduction

In this issue of Insights, our principal contributors are, in different ways, reflecting on the voices we hear in various theological and biblical themes. Professor Bridgett Green, assistant professor in New Testament here at Austin Seminary, has written a provocative article in which she reflects on two often-contested theological terms in our time. She explores from various angles the language of “kingdom” and the language of “kin-dom.” She appreciates traditional “kingdom” language, but also critiques its moral failures, the inherent patriarchy of real-world kingdoms, past and present, and the distortions that it can evoke. With respect to “kin-dom” language and its evocation of horizontal and familial ideals of inclusion and mutuality, Dr. Green draws appreciative links from the language of mujerista theology and the centrality of family and solidarity in Latinx cultures. She also acknowledges that both “kin-doms” and “kingdoms” were alive in the ears of Jesus’s first-century listeners. Both theological spaces offer promise and peril, she concludes, and each metaphor is used rightly only “if it is aligned with Jesus’s justice-oriented, equitable, and inclusive message.”

Dr. Febbie C. Dickerson, associate professor of New Testament at American Baptist College, focuses on our “God-talk”—the language we use to present God and God’s work. Often such God-talk, she says, “is centered upon personal piety, but it may be even more helpful if it points toward the spirit of God that rests in communal spaces.” Think about that when next you encounter someone on the sidewalk begging for food and are simply tempted to utter such empty God-talk as “I’m praying for you.” Dr. Eric Barreto, the Weyerhaeuser Associate Professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary, dwells brilliantly upon the complexity of “bearing witness.” It, too, is more than “God-talk,” for it is not just an announcing of how we have come to understand God but also “a form of listening to the ways God has moved in, and acted among, and shaped communities prior to our witness.” He goes on to say that such witness “never precedes God’s activity or calling. Witness always means swimming in the wake of God’s expansive, always surprising grace.” It is, in the end, not an announcement of God’s activity, but rather a response to it.

I am pleased to have been invited to write the culture column for this issue, and I reflect on a recent essay by New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, offering appreciation for his take on approaching religious belief as a leap of faith. Please join me in diving deeply into this issue of Insights!

Theodore J. Wardlaw, President, Austin Seminary