Customer Reviews

To Live in Peace: Biblical Faith and the Changing Inner City

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This is a work of great imagination and power, and in my opinion, the most compelling and richly developed theological account of community building in an urban context to date. There's been a lot of talk about this book inside and outside the academy, and for good reason. In the past decade, Reverend Gornik has emerged as one of the most eloquent and intelligent theologian-activists in North America. Like Dietrich Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship and Martin Luther King, Jr.s' Strength to Love, this groundbreaking book is theological writing born of intense human struggle and conviction, a stunningly imaginative and powerful work that reveals its wisdom in complex textures, like glimpses of redemption amidst the polyvant postmodern city. It's as if Gornik is showing us a new way of doing theology, or at least reminding us what a dangerous venture it is to unleash the God of the Bible from the God of the academicians: we might have to change our lives, our neighborhoods, and our policy preferences. Gornik shows us, both through theological analysis and narrative description, that biblical faith matters greatly to the social existence of Christians; to the way we locate ourselves in towns and cities as well as the way we respond to the challenges of civic responsibility and the brokenness of creation. To Dwell in Peace reads like a new and urgently needed interpretation of the Social Gospel, though with greater confessional specificity and theological articulation, hence its urgency and importance.

For a generation or two, White American evangelicals, probably in exactly the same proportion as their secular conterparts, have been fleeing to the suburbs to escape the social ills of the city. Even more shameful than the scale of this white flight is the fact that almost no one reflects on this critically in the church. It never occurs to most to ever teach or preach about the importance of serving the city, or developing a theology of urban life. It all comes down to a rejection of the basic Biblical impulse that we Christians are called to go toward the pain, not away from it. I do NOT think all Xians are called to live in the inner city, but I DO think we need to ask questions about serving others instead of protecting ourselves, about living in community instead of fleeing to privacy. As we seek to apply these thoughts to our lives, Gornick is an outstanding, accessible place to start.

Gornick is both academically adept (he has a British PhD) and practically oriented (he planted a PCA church in inner city Baltimore). This book will challenge the most thoughtful (his footnotes alone are a massive education) and convict the most stubborn.

Churches live primarily to serve themselves and compete with one another for providing services to increasingly consumeristic congregations. For all the talk about mission and service, the churches are driven by numbers, ever more elaborate programs, psychobabble, and slick buildings. At best ministries of reconciliation and justice become optional add-ons to the program menu of churches, when the Gospel requires them to be at the core of all we do in the church.

Gornik lays out a sophisticated prescription for change. In teh process he does not advocate for 'mercy' ministry that humiliates its recipients. Instead he calls for simply connecting faith with life. This unfolds into a vision for restoring the shalom of God's new creation through 'thousands of little things" done "right over a period of many years." He addresses both indiviuals and structures in the process.

Gornik seeks to activate the Biblical vision of urban renewal -- Isaiah's vision (Is. 58), and John's vision which closes the canon (Rev. 22). Here re-creating community is part of our shared creational identity.

Yes, some may quibble with his somewhat progressive political views that make subtle appearances from time to time. But these are not necessary to his themes. Fiscal conservatives can surely share his enthusiasm for urban renewal and Christian community. This is truly an indispensible book.

This book was a great intro to issues in urban ministry and development. Solid theology from a reformed perspective, good story/case study. A bit overwhelming to see the complexity of the issues, though.