Douglas John Hall

I first encountered Douglas John Hall, emeritus professor of theology at McGill University in Montreal, when I read his book, Confessing the Faith: Christian Theology in a North American Context at the beginning of my D.Min program at Columbia Theological Seminary; I think it was in the Fall 1999 or 2000.

Hall is the featured writer in a series I always enjoy called "How My Mind Has Changed" in The Christian Century. (Sept 7, 2010 issue) CC has run this series at intervals since 1939; over the twenty-five years I've been reading The Christian Century the reflections in this series have been humbling and provocative (with just one notable exception, where as I remember it a Biblical theologian took the opportunity to challenge the whole premise of the series and said, essentially, I haven't changed my mind at all!)

Hall, in contrast, ends the essay he entitled "Cross and Context" with these words: "probably if I am granted more years beyond my present 82 my mind will change again. But I hope that it will always be change for the sake of distinguishing a living and therefore modest faith from the great temptation of all religion, which is to imagine itself true."

But here are the words which I think speak to our time and to the challenges the Church faces, words I want to continue to ponder and ruminate on and live by:

Instead of clinging to absurd and outmoded visions of grandeur, which were never Christ's intention for his church, serious Christian communities ought now to relinquish triumphalistic dreams of majority status and influence in high places and ask themselves about the possibilities of witnessing to God's justice and love from the edges of empire - which is where prophetic religion has always lived. Instead of mourning their losses or naively hoping for their recovery, Christians who are serious about their faith ought to ask themselves why all the metaphors Jesus uses to depict his "little flock" are metaphors of smallness: salt, yeast, light - small things that can serve larger causes because they do not aim to become big themselves.

To this I would simply add Amen and Amen!