Regional Fusion

I was sitting in a hotel on the Sea of Gallilee with friends Todd Still of the Truett Seminary, Ralph West pastor fo Church Without Walls Houston and Stephen Wells, the pastor of South Main Baptist church.  West and Wells described compelling ministries in Houston Texas. It was a stimulating conversation with working pastors who loved their congregations and their city. When I could not sleep that night I knew that I  wanted to learn more about how one might read the Bible in Houston Texas.

Several years ago I explored African American biblical hermeneutics in a book called Experience and Tradition: A Primer in Black Biblical Hermeneutics.  The book grew out of conversations with the writers who contributed to the Stony the Road We Trod volume on black biblical hermeneutics. The book reflected a black and white world that shaped me.  However, over the years, as I lived in Berkeley California it became clear that I was no longer living in a black and white word. It was a world of living and every changing colors.  The book Listening In: A Multicultural Reading of the Psalms explored the ways that a person might overhear the readings of different cultures.

There is a new way to ask the basic questions of biblical hermeneutics. When Mary Ann Tolbert and Fernando Sergovia edited the volume Reading in This Place they construed place a social location. I want to examine the intersection of social location and physical location. The urban context of let us say Houston, New York, Chicago, Washington D.C. requires a reader to present a reading that makes sense in a multiracial, interfaith context.  Rather than trying to find one way of reading I want to ask how one reads the Bible responsibly in Houston, New York, Chicago, and Washington D.C. This is a regional fusion. The term fusion is used in music and food to explore the pastiche of cultures.

Like the Listening volume this experiment is in no way meant to legislate a prescriptive hermeneutic. These essays will outline a basic melody that can take a particular riff as they say in jazz. The riff will have the flavor of the location of the reader. When Dave Brubeck was learning how to play jazz his teacher told him to travel the world listening to all he could and allow that to inform his playing. We will take a similar trip. It will be part the Travel Channel, part Food Network and all Bible and Theology.