Welcome to the Christian Revolution!

Hello readers! Welcome to my brand new blog, The Christian Revolution!

At this point, I am sure that most of you reading this will understand what a blog is and what it is intended to do. That being said, my hope in writing on The Christian Revolution blog is that I (and any future guest contributors) will be able to provide some insightful commentary on all things related to Christianity, the Bible, theology, culture, politics, philosophy…all of the above really.

As a Christian (of the Nicene, Chalcedonian, Wesleyan flavor), one of my deepest convictions is that the historical events of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth have fundamentally affected every aspect of reality. The effects of the Christ-event have impacted not simply the divine-human relationship, but the whole world’s relationship to its Creator. As such, no topic is off-limits to Christian thought. The reality of Christ is all-encompassing.

Of course, I can’t cover every topic. However, I know a little bit about the subjects of biblical studies, theology, philosophy, and socio-cultural analysis (really just a fancy term for cultural criticism). So dear readers, that means if you are interested in analyzing any of those topics from a Christian perspective then please stay tuned as this blog takes off! It should be a fun and—if I am doing my job correctly—informative ride!

Before I conclude this inaugural post, it might be good to provide some info about myself as a writer and why I named this blog The Christian Revolution.

As you’ve probably already guessed from the blog’s banner, my name is Taylor Brown. I am currently in my fourth and final year of seminary, finishing up both a Master of Divinity (M.Div.) and a Master of Theology (Th.M.) in Biblical Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary under the supervision of Dr. Ben Witherington III. Before coming to Asbury, I studied for a year at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, right after I earned my B.A. in Sociology (Anthropology Emphasis) and a Minor in Religious Studies from Oklahoma State University (Go Pokes!) in May 2013. After completing my studies at Asbury I plan to enter a Ph.D. program in New Testament Studies and one day, hopefully, teach in a university or graduate school setting.

Finally, why the title, The Christian Revolution?

It’s a legitimate question, especially when we live in a world where Christianity hardly seems revolutionary. As someone who studies the New Testament and the ancient, historical context that Christianity emerged into, I have come to see just how truly revolutionary Christianity has been in reshaping the way our world works. We don’t realize it now (living in the wake of nearly 2000 years of Christian history and culture), but some of the most commonplace notions that we take for granted—one, utterly transcendent God Who loves the world, every human person (even the lowest of the low) having infinite worth, the ontological equality of women alongside men, etc.— entered into the world with the religious and metaphysical equivalent of an atomic bomb with the Christ-event.

Christianity was—and still is—a revolution of all of reality.

I’ll end this first post with a quote from David Bentley Hart (one of my favorite theologians and someone you’ll undoubtedly hear more of) on the revolutionary character of Christianity. It comes from page 171 of his excellent book, Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies (Yale University Press, 2009):

“When all is said and done, the pagan critics of the early church were right to see the new faith as an essentially subversive movement…Christianity may never have been a revolution in the political sense: it was not a convulsive, violent, or intentionally provocative faction that had some ‘other vision’ of political power to recommend; but neither, for that reason, was the change it brought about something merely local, transient, and finite. The Christian vision of reality was nothing less than—to use the words of Nietzsche—a ‘transvaluation of all values,’ a complete revision of the moral and conceptual categories by which human beings were to understand themselves and one another and their places within the world. It was—again to use Nietzsche’s words, but without the sneer—a ‘slave revolt in morality.’ But it was also, as far as the Christians were concerned, a slave revolt ‘from above,’ if such a thing could be imagined; for it had been accomplished by a savior who had, as Paul said in his Epistle to the Philippians, willingly exchanged the ‘form of God’ for the ‘form of a slave,’ and had thereby overthrown the powers that reigned on high.”

Welcome to the Christian Revolution.