Burning Center, Porous Borders

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).