Foster identifies six historical streams of Christianity, lived out fully by Jesus and partially by the rest of us. For each of these streams he gives a biography of a historical figure, a biblical character, and a modern person from the twentieth century. Then he identifies the defining characteristics of stream, and identifies strengths and potential pitfalls. This summary is hardly adequate, though, so if this sounds interesting, I commend a purusal of the notes section to you.

The Contemplative stream, and is demonstrated by St. Anthony, the apostle John, and Frank C. Laubach (missionary and literacy program developer). This stream focuses on intimacy with God through prayer, which results of love, joy, and delight, but also in purging fire.

The Holiness stream, demonstrated by Phoebe Palmer (Methodist), James the Just (Jesus’ brother), and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, focuses on the virtuous life. “Virtue” here is more of the sense “a life that works”, the opposite of “vice”, which is something that makes life not “work”. It focuses on the heart, and purity with God.

The Charismatic stream is the spirit-empowered life, demonstrated by St. Francis, the apostle Paul, and William Seymour (leader of the Azuza Street revival that founded Pentecostalism). The focus here is on Holy Spirit power through the gifts of the spirit, whose purpose is to deepen our love with Christ.

The Social Justice stream is demonstrated by John Woolman (first American colonist to campaign against slavery), the prophet Amos, and Dorthy Day. This stream focuses on bringing righteous-justice, lovingkindess, and peaceful-unity to all relationships: personal, social, and institutional. (Note that this stream has nothing to do with the contemporaneous “Social Justice” movement with its roots in a Marxist oppressor-oppressed power binary, which is not a stream of Christianity at all.)

The Evangelical stream is demonstrated by St. Augustine, the apostle Peter, and Billy Graham. It focuses not only on proclaiming the gospel, but also on the Bible as the external arbiter of what is true, and on the community of faith living out the consequences of the Christ event.

The Incarnational stream highlights Susanna Wesley, Bezalel (chief craftsman of the Taberncale), and Dag Hammarskjöld (influential U.N. Secretary-General). Also referred to as sacramental living, this stream focuses on living out Christ in every moment, because the physical world is how God expresses himself to us (and how we express him).

Foster has distilled the different streams, which we usually encounter mixed together when streams spill over into ours (or occasionally, we spill into theirs), into a coherent summary. His summaries do a great job of incorporating the full richness of the tradition, rather than the truncated forms we tend to see them in. Thus, Social Justice isn’t just about prioritizing the poor, but rather shalom in human relationships, which is much deeper than simply something like giving handouts to homeless. Similarly, the list of strengths and pitfalls are pretty accurate. In the streams that I have experienced (and become somewhat disillusioned with at the moment), he articulates in one or two paragraphs the dysfunctions that have taken me one or two years to become aware of and attempt to describe in five minute, wandering diatribes. Furthermore, he gives the causes of the dysfunctions. Which makes me wonder how he managed to do this, since coming at this through personal experience would seem like it would take a lifetime—the streams take years to internalize, let alone distill down to their essence.

Foster seems to be most sympathetic to the social justice stream, and least sympathetic to the charismatic stream. In fact, the charismatic chapter is only about 60% of the length of the other chapters. A more complete discussion might include the Charismatic Renewal in the Anglican and Catholic churches, and the Vineyard movement, which taught lay people to use the more “supernatural” spiritual gifts in the course of normal ministry. A discussion of miracles—healing being the most common—would be helpful, too, since miracles are a prominent feature of Charismatics and can be a divisive topic that is misunderstood by non-Charismatics and even unhealthily prioritized by Charismatics.

I found this book quite helpful. Not only did it introduce me to other streams of which I was only vaguely aware of (due to spillover into mine from adjacent streams), but it helped me appreciate their richness and how essential each is to living in the Kingdom. It is helpful to be able to identify the streams that resonate most strongly right now to get an idea of where to pursue them. It is also helpful to understand the importance and strengths in the other streams so that we can appreciate them rather than writing them off. Also, Foster’s descriptions of the streams I have been steeped in were challenging, because his distallations reminded me that everything is pointing back to Christ, but frequently I had not internalized that, or had lost focus on that essential purpose.


Review: 9.5
▶ Notes

Copyright © 2024 by Geoffrey Prewett