gathering in light

Carrying on from my last post I thought I’d point out a few more aspects to John (Jack) Caputo’s book I do like and then say something about what I don’t like. If you’re interest in getting into the discussion on deconstruction, and what it has to do with the church, especially in its more Catholic and Emerging forms (Caputo is a Catholic) this really is a great book to read. It’s helpful not just in how this applies to church, but also in his very succinct and easily understandable explanations of some pretty hard-to-get-at ideas.

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Last week I did a lecture in class on John Caputo’s most recent book,What Would Jesus Deconstruct? I have mixed feelings about the book (more on this later) but I think in either case he makes some very helpful comments. The class I am currently a TA for is Mission in Contemporary Culture. In it we basically look at the world of cultural studies and how it (or if) it can be used in the church and in theology. Caputo’s book is a great example of deconstruction (I’ll hesitantly call a method used in culture studies) meeting the church.

Caputo takes as his starting point Charles Sheldon’s classic late nineteenth century text In His Steps (where we get the famed question WWJD?) and looks at the interruption of the homeless man entering the worship service and breaking down as an example of deconstruction. That is, during a worship service, is the is the unexpected and uninvited that transforms, the exact opposite of what was ‘programmed’ or planned for worship.

The man says,

I’m not an ordinary tramp, though I don’t know of any teaching of Jesus that makes one kind of a tramp less worth saving than another. Do you?…It seems to me there’s an awful lot of trouble in the world that somehow wouldn’t exist if all the people who sing such songs went and lived them out. I suppose I don’t understand. But what would Jesus do?

Caputo, What Would Jesus Deconstruct?, 20-21

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