Burning Center, Porous Borders articulates what the church is and is
called to be about in the world, a world now globalized to the point
that the local is lived globally and the global is lived locally. The
church must respond creatively and prophetically to the
challenges-economic disparity, war and terrorism, diaspora, ecological
threat, health crisis, religious diversity, and so on-posed by our
highly globalized world. It can do so only if the church's spiritual
center burns mightily. Conversely, it can burn mightily in the spirit of
Christ only if its borders are porous and allows the fresh air/spirit of
change to blow in and out. While there is much rhetoric about change,
the most common response to change is to continue doing business as
usual. This is particularly the case in the face of perceived global
threats. In spite of the hoopla and euphoria of the global village,
walls of division and exclusion are rising, hearts are constricting, and
moral imagination shrinking. In response to this context, Burning
Center, Porous Borders proposes alternative ways or images of being a
church: burning center and porous borders, wall-buster and
bridge-builder, translocal (glocal), mending-healer, radical
hospitality, community of the earth-spirit, household of life abundant,
dialogians of life, and community of hope. In Burning Center, Porous
Borders congregational vitality and progressive praxis kiss and embrace!
"This superb book is theologically profound and ethically astute in its
critique of the church in a globalized world. Fernandez draws on his own
rich personal, pastoral, and academic experiences, as well as an
abundance of scholarship, to insightfully illuminate the connections
between a range of crucial issues and to prophetically revision the
church's mission in transformative and hopeful ways." -Pamela Brubaker
Professor Emeritus of Religion California Lutheran University Eleazar S.
Fernandez is Professor of Constructive Theology at United Theological
Seminary of the Twin Cities, New Brighton, Minnesota. He is the author
of Reimagining the Human: Theological Anthropology in Response to
Systemic Evils (2004).
