Lee C. CAMP. Scandalous Witness: A Little Political Manifesto for Christians. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2020. pp. viii + 183. $19.99, hb. ISBN 978-0-8028-7735-2. Reviewed by Tobias WINRIGHT, Saint Louis University, St. Louis, MO 63108.
A professor of theology and ethics at Lipscombe University, the author, Lee C. Camp, also hosts a theological variety program in Nashville, Tennessee, called the Tokens Show. Among his previously published books are Mere Discipleship: Radical Christianity in a Rebellious World (2008) and Who Is My Enemy? Questions American Christians Must Face about Islam and Themselves (2016). A popular writer, teacher, public speaker, and preacher, Camp hails from the American Protestant tradition known during the nineteenth century as the Restorationist Movement and, specifically, its Churches of Christ rather than the Christian Church (i.e., Disciples of Christ) branch. A classmate of mine in graduate school at the University of Notre Dame, Camp also draws from a number of Catholic sources, including Bartolomé de las Casas, Thomas Merton, and William Cavanaugh, as well as Protestant thinkers, such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, William Stringfellow, and Walter Wink.
As this book’s subtitle notes, Camp offers a manifesto for Christians rather than a monograph for academicians, although I believe he provides all of us with some important insights and helpful reminders about theological identities and loyalties, whether they be our own, our students’, our colleagues’, or our churches’. For Camp, Christianity is less a religion than a particular way of hospitable communal life and a noncoercive politic with a distinctive, hopeful vision of history and its purpose or end. Jesus offered a way that was “neither right nor left nor religious” (8). Thus, although much of what Camp writes appears relevant for conservative evangelical Christians in the United States—especially during the lead up to the 2020 elections when so many of them supported partisan politics permeated by nationalism, white supremacy, and xenophobia—he attempts to be an “equal opportunity” critic of Christians on the opposite side of the partisan aisle, too. After all, they both tend to make the mistake of “not trying to sort out the best way to be Christian but how to be the best partisan of liberalism,” whether a “conservative liberal” or a “liberal liberal” (44, italics his). Put differently, the primary problem is that Christians in the United States “have been taken captive by the American imagination, in such a way that the witness of Christianity has been obscured if not functionally obliterated” (104).
Each chapter is actually a proposition. There are fifteen, beginning with “History Is Not One Damn Thing after Another,” and ending with “Christian Engagement Must Always Be Ad Hoc.” Other eye-catching propositions include: “The United States Was Not, Is Not, and Will Not Be a Christian Nation” (Proposition 6), “Christian Partisanship Is Like a Fistfight on the Titanic” (Proposition 9), “Liberal Political Puissance Is Not the Goal” (Proposition 12), and “Christianity Is Not Countercultural” (Proposition 14).
Still, given the invocations of God by many Trump supporters, including those who stormed the Capitol on January 6th, 2021 (for example, I saw some carrying Bibles, some with “Jesus saves” signs), I thought, as I read this book, that Camp’s propositions serve as a corrective more to conservative Christians. I worried that Camp may be conveying an impression of moral equivalence between conservative liberal and liberal liberal American Christians. Yet, admittedly, throughout the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on January 20th, invocations of God and pledges to a flag and one nation “under God” filled the air. And Camp is correct that when we hear “in God we trust” and one nation “under God,” “The question is who the God is” (72, italics his). But I must confess that the God who was invoked on the 20th seems more consonant with the God revealed to us in Jesus Christ. Undoubtedly, liberals might mistakenly conflate their Christian and their national identities, perhaps even in dangerous ways, but it is hard for me to imagine them, in the name of their faith, attacking and killing others today.
I agree with Camp: “Baptism is the Christian’s pledge of allegiance” that should “trump all other pledges of allegiance” (126-27, italics his). Borders, therefore, hold “only provisional, contingent importance, and not an ultimate one” (135). Camp does not advocate sectarian withdrawal from society. Indeed, separating ourselves from culture is impossible. Instead, Camp calls for “a percipient cultural discernment” of imaginative analogous practices in church and society:
Another example Camp provides, which stood out to me due to my own scholarly work on the subject, is the way that Christian studies and practices of nonviolence and conflict transformation might contribute to reimagining community policing by cities and public safety departments in ways that minimize the use of force, especially lethal force (170).
The book, which is suited best for adult education groups in churches, also has an online course available. There are interesting photos, artwork, and historical documents inserted throughout, as well. It may also be appropriate for college and university courses having to do with political theology.