I could tell just by looking at Justin Vernon that I was going to love Bon Iver’s music. The dude has an awesomely beard, what’s not to love about that? I know, I know, we’re not supposed to judge people, but let’s be honest it happens and we all do it. I do it with books too. I can usually tell by the cover, the endorsements (except with J.I. Packer, because he endorses everything), and the table of contents whether a book is going to be good or bad. Occasionally I am surprised, however. That was the case with Matthew Raley’s book The Diversity Culture: Creating Conversations of Faith with Buddhist Baristas, Agnostic Students, Aging Hippies, Political Activists, and Everyone in Between. If I am honest I made up my mind about the book before I even picked it up. I was sure it was going to be a theological joke, full of impotent theology and inane methodological suggestions. I was pleasantly surprised at both Raley’s seeming orthodoxy and astute cultural reflections.
Raley is the senior pastor of the Orland Evangelical Free Church in northern California. He’s not your typical pastor. He’s grown up in a very artsy family and says that he feels at home among a whole host of different “worlds.” He says he can function well in secular universities or his small town church (159). It is this feature of his character that compels him to help his church engage the culture around them. It is this feature that compelled him to write this little book. As Raley sees it there has been a cultural shift at large in which younger generations, regardless of where they grew up, are moving away from the traditional values and mindsets of past ages. Younger generations today are moving increasingly toward an “urban,” “Eastern,” “New Age,” and “liberated” worldview (12). This class of young adults have been labeled in all sorts of ways. David Brooks calls them “Bobos, bourgeois bohemian,” Bill O’Reilly calls them “secular progressives” and Rush Limbaugh calls them “liberal wackos,” but Raley calls them the “Diversity Culture.” He defines it this way: The dominant American ethos of openness toward all beliefs and spiritual traditions (13). There has been a shift in the culture, of course. I see it frequently among the college students I work with in my small southern Ohio town. The average student in my class has some familiarity with the Christian faith, but no longer embraces it or no longer embraces it to the exclusion of other faiths. What’s important for Raley’s book is that Christians fear this culture, and, worse still, feel no need to engage this culture. But Raley believes that we have a responsibility to leave our Christian subculture and follow the model of Jesus, who engaged just such culturally diverse people.
To exemplify the model of Jesus Raley turns us to the ministry of Jesus with the Woman at the well in Samaria, in John 4. By means of looking at Jesus’ ministry to this woman, Raley says, we can learn how to heal the “broken relationships” that exist between Christians and the Diversity Culture, and once again “show Jesus Christ to contemporary America” (16). What I realize, of course, is that for many this kind of language will sound like liberalism. I know because that was my initial response, but nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, I think such a reaction, represents the disconnect many Christians have made between Orthodoxy theology and practical relation care in evangelism. In many cases the church is concerned with promoting right doctrine among non-believers, a commendable goal, but they take no interest in trying to understand why individuals have rejected it. Raley has done a great job of helping us to assess our own methodology as pastors and churches.
Each chapter of the book opens with a popular article from The New York Times, a common read for members of the Diversity Culture. In each article Raley pulls out principles about the life of the Diversity Culture and then looks at how Jesus interaction with the woman at the well helps us to interact with these individuals. Interlaced with this is a fictional story about a young woman in the diversity culture who meets a middle-aged Baptist at a local coffee shop. The fictional story helps us put some skin on the practical discussions of engagement. It also helps us to remember that when we address a group like the “Diversity Culture” we are talking about real people with real problems, concerns, loves, and hurts. The book is full of wonderful insights about everyday people I meet, and insights about me and my church. Raley comments on everything from the lack of self-identity that our culture possesses, and street postmodernism, to the power of Scripture and community and personal testimony. He gives us glimpses, along the way, to how he has done this individually and how he has helped his church to do this. I especially appreciated his discussion on the need for Christians to be more eccentric than they are. He doesn’t here mean that Christians should be weird in the ways that we usually think Christians are. Christians are weird, we know this, but most of the time we get labeled as weird because we are lame. Take for example our constant Christianizing of popular culture. We take the Burger King logo and turn it into “Christ is King” and put it on a t-shirt. We take High School Musical and make “Sunday School Musical.” This is LAME! But Raley’s interest is in our being weird in such a way that allows us the flexibility to fit into different culture and mix with different people naturally that we might better point them to Jesus. Raley says it this way: To begin with, they should not only watch the weirdos, the people who don’t fit in boxes, but, if they can swing it without acid, they should become weirdos. They’d have more credibility (111). The book is laced with important reminders, not just about engaging the “Diversity Culture” but about engaging all non-believers. Sometimes it’s simple suggestions, like answering their real questions (chapter 10). Sometimes it’s more nuanced, like analyzing your mode of engagement (are you an ideological debater or relational, see chapter 9).
Raley does a great job of helping us to evaluate a number of things: (1) our concern for the lost; (2) our approach to engaging the lost; and (3) and many of our own assumptions about the lost. I thought this book was going to be a joke, but even in this area Raley has challenged me to consider a fresh another important point: never judge a book by its cover.
Sparrow & Heart Soul Care 