This is a talk lots of us having been waiting for – what kind of position should believers take in politics? Iain confronts the fear that many people hold – ie involving faith and politics will result in a kind of ‘Christian Taliban’. Many Christians feel caught in a no-man’s land between the hard choice of involvement and detachment. We want our faith to be involved in politics and society but fear becoming hard core fundamentalists – the ‘Christian Taliban’ comment. But we also fear retreating into a totally private world of faith. Iain’s talk charts a brilliant third way and as such is one of the most important talks you will ever hear.
Iain is Professor of Old Testament at Regent College, Vancouver. He is, without doubt, one of the leading scholars in the world on the Old Testament. But scholarship in Iain’s case does not mean burrowing down into the details of the text but rather lifting our gaze higher and broader to see the topography of the narrative in all its contours and implications. When Iain first visited us at GC to give his talks entitled ‘The Old Testament Reloaded’, we asked him to give talks that people could think about for a decade afterwards—and he delivered.
Iain positions the text inside the wider context of Ancient near Eastern world-views, which Christians once were threatened by since they felt it threatened the status of the OT as ‘God’s word’. But far from threatening the wonder of the OT, this emphasises its uniqueness and wonder. Iain delivers his talks in plain language but underneath his Scottish succinctness, he develops huge paradigm shifts and accumulating visions of the nature of God. He has an inquiring mind and an open mind—which means that he takes us on a journey of questions and faith in each of his talks.
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