Book Report - A Theology as Big as the City By Ray Bakke

Sayo Ajiboye
DMin Overture 1
June 11, 2007
A Theology as Big as the City
By Ray Bakke
221 pages

One of Ray Bakke’s many distinctions and the one that may be considered foundational to all his other excellent gifts is the gift of access into the mind and lives of urban population globally. Bakke is a missionary to missionaries, a spokesman for others, a griot that puts into words what others know – instinctively – but cannot verbalize. Reading Theology as Big as a City makes a true Urban missionary want to say “Aha, that was what I always thought…!”

The autobiographical strategy interspersed with real world datas and a clear understanding of reflective scriptural options from the perspective of the urbanites makes Theology as Big as a City a seminal work of genius. Bakke attempts a systemization of thought based on his personal journey through different life phases. He uses these journeys as an anchor that he hangs his story and systemic thought. Bakke detailed rural life as a boy in the mountains of Washington; the centrality of the scriptures to the life and purpose of his family shines through brilliantly. The rural boy however labored to show that the focus of the scriptures is on the urban areas and its occupants; Bakke showed that in over a thousand places in the scriptures, the focus was on a city.

Bakke is committed to the concept of the Bible as a letter. He reads the scriptures and retells it almost like “The People Magazine.” There is a brazenly open attempt to enter the world of the people to whom the scriptures is written as is. No dressing up or dumbing down for Bakke, it is all about smelling it, touching it, feeling it style. Bakke does not exercise the care of a “Readers Digest Editor,” he rather seems to relish the challenge of consciously searching for the outer limits like a Tabloid News editor. Whether the law, poetry, or the gospel and the epistles, Bakke’s commitment seems to be making it real to make it meaningful, to make it accessible, to retell it for us.

Bakke’s writing is reflective. His reflective methodology flows out of the Wesleyan tradition that cycles around Bible - history/tradition - urban context – Church - Bible and so on. Bakke weaves a beautiful tapestry that brings into play tensions and outlets for the same. Bakke looks for thesis and highlights same in bold relief with its antithesis. Moses mother is the forerunner of the modern welfare mom, truth is balanced by love, faith is glocal (global and local) mystery is surrounded by certainty; urban life of faith is filled with a holy balanced passion.

Every servant of the gospel needs to tap into Bakke’s gift. Though specifically focused on cities, the interconnectivity of our world has created a global village that confronts the formerly rustic rural communities with realities that goes beyond the limited resources physically available. 2007 has created a situation where the remote location in Africa or Asia can experience – real time – what is going on in New York or Chicago. This situation demands a gift of observation, an ability to analyze and an imagination that is contextual. Faith must be interpreted in byte sizes and re-defined in cyber context. Bakke led the way - almost like a Prophet - in doing this.
The book takes me back to my root in Africa. It challenges the assumption of imagined isolation of the New Generation; it demands a reengagement with what it means to be the Church. Young people will continue to ask question, genrotocratic privileges will continue to be eroded; hierarchical assumption will be challenged more and more; twenty years from this date will present the world with a new Africa, an Africa that my generation may not recognize – not to talk of the generation before me.

The church must engage with what it means to be engaged with a world-wide-net that has a tendency to suck in, redefine and mold in its own image. Those seeking to represent Christ must rethink how they want him to be conceived in Africa of the new millennium. I am convinced that the driving agenda will not be hunger and sickness or need; the driving agenda will be information and the use to which it is put. I tremble as I wonder at the tendencies of my generation of African leaders to assume that things will always be one way. I wonder whether we will not react to the new realities of our globe like Bakke’s contemporaries that fled the cities in the face of the onslaught of the Civil Rights movement. It seems to me that African leaders may need a new model for defining ministry; Bakke’s model seems to be very relevant, very needed, and very contextual.