Dreams and the Kingdom of God

My August Barclay Press essay is now online. It’s a little late for August, but time has been pretty tight lately. The essay looks at Stephen Duncombe’s recent book on progressive politics, “Dream Re-Imagining” and applies some of the findings to a theological perspective on living out the Kingdom of God. Here’s a quote:

As I see it, (at least some of) the church can be guilty of becoming too “reality-based.” Much of it has become heavily propositional, too abstract and disembodied to form real apprentices of the kingdom. Often our worship involves passivity more than participation, our sermons tend to share the same thematic structures week after week, the same punchlines, and perpetuate a reliance on rational arguments to make points. We take the concrete words of Scripture and abstract them in a way that requires intellectual assent more than existential demand. I think we can also be guilty of draining people of kingdom imaginations. In what ways does our faith communities unknowingly manufacture consent with the world as opposed to a dissent for the kingdom?

Click here to read the essay.