Book Review: A New Theological Dance or Same Old Boring?

 

Romans Disarmed: Resisting Empire, Demanding Justice by Sylvia C Keesmaat
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I SO wanted to like this book. I was on Hold at the library for weeks to get it AND my library app tells me there are several more waiting for it now, so I'll try and keep this brief. (Especially for me)

Romans Disarmed starts by depicting a situation where a group of Christians are meeting and dancing with extreme joy. One person suddenly is overcome with his personal grief and is enveloped by the Community of Believers who wish to "Rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn." (Romans 12) Great. Sounds like a wonderful foundation to reexamine the book of Paul to the Romans.

But then we are confronted with a HUGE political agenda by the writers. They have been swept into the legal fight of Indigenous Native Canadians and how they were relocated to various Catholic-run schools in the mid-twentieth century where a great many were abused. The Canadian Government looked into these issues and has since offered a public apology to those (most who are now dead due to age) and the generations that followed. Not to mention backing it up with TONS of government money as well as free homes, and free education to all natives in Canada. As my Native friend used to say, "Being Native is where it's at, Laura-Lee." Knowing I was of French Canadian descent she would urge me, "If you can prove that you are just one-quarter Native or Metis (a new race formed in Canada from the generations of the French Canadians intermarrying the Natives) then you can get your entire education for free!"

Anyway, back to the book review. Somehow the authors got involved with the Canadian Natives plight, swept up in it through the years, and have viewed the book of Romans as a way to fight "colonialism" and stick it to the "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" which actually exists for the sole purpose of "reconciliation." I don't think their comments and assumptions on behalf of Paul are helping in that regard. But everyone has some agenda, so let's move on.

The only problem is that the authors can't. And if that's not enough after they get all warm and "touchy-feely" at the beginning and are encouraging us to use our hearts more while reading Romans to get to the core of Paul's "longings" as he wrote it, they dissolve into a hypothetical question and answer that involves one dry and "brainiac" answer after another to display that their "Phds" are well-earned.
Examples: "The Truth and Reconciliation Commissions call to repudiate the ideology of conquest, assimilation, and genocide amounts to the disarming of the foundations of a colonist society."
"Did this letter legitimate or subvert the foundational myths, symbols, practices, and structures that characterized life at the center of the empire?"
"Paul repeatedly emphasizes an ethos of mutual welcome that abstains from exclusionary judgment".

Get the idea. Page after page of talk like this. I feel very bad for people who picked up this book thinking it would give them a fresh and deeper view of the book of Romans. I feel very bad that it took many years to write this book because the authors were forever rewriting after test readers would ask for clarification (although now I understand why). I feel very bad that I didn't have the heart to see this book to end. I feel very bad that my own mother attended one of these Catholic-run schools but NOT for free and NEVER got any apology or any free education from it.

But on the other hand I realized that, as much of a "brainiac" as he was, the apostle Paul never "subverted" the basic meaning of his letter to the Romans by using all the big words he no doubt knew. He wrote from the heart to people he loved, preached "Christ crucified" and did it so my eleven-year-old self had no problem understanding his "longing".
Skip THIS book, open the Bible, and read Paul's letter to the Romans. And all the others he wrote from the very mouth of God as he sat condemned in prison simply because he loved Jesus.
Nuf said yet?

I hope this helps. Thanks for reading another one of my reviews even though it doesn't put things into "the sociohistorical context of Paul's systematic theology". Yikes!

Sincerely, Laura-Lee

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