Unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality, and Mortality, by Richard Beck

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Unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality, and Mortality, by Richard Beck

Unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality, and Mortality, by Richard Beck


Unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality, and Mortality, by Richard Beck


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Unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality, and Mortality, by Richard Beck

"I desire mercy, not sacrifice" Echoing Hosea, Jesus defends his embrace of the "unclean" in the Gospel of Matthew, seeming to privilege the prophetic call to justice over the Levitical pursuit of purity. And yet, as missional faith communities are well aware, the tensions and conflicts between holiness and mercy are not so easily resolved. At every turn, it seems that the psychological pull of purity and holiness tempts the church into practices of social exclusion and a Gnostic flight from "the world" into a "too spiritual" spirituality. Moreover, the psychology of purity often lures the church into what psychologists call "The Macbeth Effect" the psychological trap that tempts us into believing that ritual acts of cleansing can replace moral and missional engagement. Finally, time after time, wherever we see churches regulating their common life with the idiom of dirt, disgust, and defilement, we find a predictable wake of dysfunction: ruined self-images, social stigma, and communal conflict. In an unprecedented fusion of psychological science and theological scholarship, Richard Beck describes the pernicious (and largely unnoticed) effects of the psychology of purity upon the life and mission of the church.

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Product details

Paperback: 212 pages

Publisher: Wipf & Stock Pub (March 4, 2011)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 160899242X

ISBN-13: 978-1608992423

Product Dimensions:

6 x 0.5 x 9 inches

Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review:

4.6 out of 5 stars

48 customer reviews

Amazon Best Sellers Rank:

#133,050 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

This is a Christian meditation on the impact--mostly negative--that concerns of "purity" have on the religion's behavior toward others. But instead of simply saying "Focusing on purity makes us Pharisees," Beck also examines the research behind disgust, to explain—first—that he's not casting judgments, but merely pointing out a sad tendency among religious people, and to show—second—how our inborn, knee-jerk reactions of disgust are attached to other issues (especially sex and death) that reinforce each other in ways we often don't notice. The final section focuses on how a different emphasis on the rite of Communion actually speaks to, and can possibly cure, the pharisaic tendency that biblicist Christians carry with them. I am not a believer, but as a survivor of a conservative evangelical childhood, I disagree with some of this ideas (for example, he says liberal Christianity successfully decouples the religion from its Pharisaism, but since he doesn't want to admit that liberals might be doing something right, he sort of ends with a Hail Mary pass of "notes toward a new ritual" that MIGHT work, Still, it illuminated a lot of issues for me without once being snarky or dismissive, and you leave the book knowing more about human beings, and being more compassionate. It's got its heady technical moments, but I still recommend it to anyone in a biblicist religious tradition. It should wake you up in the best way possible. I hope this is a game changer.

Based on Matt 9 & 12, God desiring mercy not sacrifice, Beck shows how the church can allow a purity and holiness mindset to overshadow it’s abil to dispense mercy to those who are different or who the consider unclean. He uses disgust psychology as the basis to reveal our natural tendencies are to build walls and limit who we allow within our realm of acceptance. Real mercy/love is in opposition to this and leads us to expand our circle. The book has a strong finish, showing how the church can fold purity and holiness into mercy, instead of allowing them to take the church in opposing directions.

I heard Richard Beck speak a few times at my church in Houston TX. I found him refreshing in his approach to living a life like Jesus. This book has opened my eyes to how I view those placed in my world. I now welcome the feelings of negative judgements I find myself having toward strangers place before me. Even though I have worked with homeless and drug addicts and did allow some subconscious biases to come into play with who I helped. It has changed my perspective completely and I’m more aware than ever of my feelings regarding others.

Christians typically assume that purity, regardless of its expression, is always preferred. Whether sexual morality, hygiene or social interaction the default stance of many within the church is purified separateness. Beck confronts this by evaluating the words Jesus borrows from Hosea, "I desire mercy and not sacrifice." For Beck, purity which is the correlative of sacrifice, always impedes the expression of mercy and the offer of hospitality.Beck effectively confronts the purity impulse within the church asking: Does the compulsion toward purity prevent the church from existing in a missional relationship to the world? In other words, can the church accomplish what it is called to do by Christ without ceasing its emphasis upon maintaining purity? (This purity is exhibited both behaviorally and relationally.)By exploring the meaning of Christian hospitality as expressed within the life of the Trinity Beck can offer some important reflections regarding the conflict between purity and hospitality within the church. For the Christian hospitality is expressed to those who need it the most and they are not those typically described as "pure". Unless, the one doing the describing is Jesus himself.This is an important book.

Richard Beck is a professor of Psychology at Abilene Christian University and the writer of the blog Experimental Theology. That perch gives him a fascinating place to ponder both the human condition and the church's role within modern society.Within the church there is a continual split between a focus on purity and a focus on hospitality or mission. Richard Beck's simple argument is that it is a necessary tension that needs to be regulated. Churches commonly known as liberal have collapsed the tension in the favor of hospitality, but in doing this they have lost the transcendent. Churches commonly known as conservative have turned inward to guard purity, but in doing this they have lost Jesus' own mission to the sinners and tax collectors exemplified in his table fellowship. Dr. Beck's method of regulation is what strikes this reviewer as that rarest of items - a new understanding of the Eucharist or Lord's Supper that at the same time is deeply orthodox.Dr. Beck achieves this by a solid grounding of the Psychology of disgust which is the emotion that grounds purity. He reviews how core disgust is a psychology regulating food and disease vectors. He then builds the argument how that core understanding spreads in moral, hospitality and mortality dimensions. He clearly demonstrates, through simple explanations of current research and theological reflection, how disgust is both necessary and toxic. It necessarily protects groups from unsafe practices, but it also shuts down mission and dialog. Understanding purity and its basis in disgust is necessary for regulating or keeping the tension. The Eucharist holds these things in tension as it cleanses through oral incorporation, it is aimed at God while also welcoming table fellowship, and body and blood which are reminders of mortality and need are the means that keep the community grounded. The purity and cleanliness is combined with the stranger, need and fleshiness of the body. Either half - the psychology review or the theological reflection - would be worth reading alone. You get them both.One last and probably most important comment. This book is profound and simple in a way that I did not think was possible in the modern age. Writing from the academy is usually impossibly dense and understanding the purpose is not always easy. Popular writing is usually readable, but at the expense of any real impact on the reader. This book reminds me of reading Luther's Freedom of a Christian - it is a profound bolt of insight that at the end you say 'how could I have ever thought differently'.

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