As many of you know, Jonathan is a leader in the New Monasticism movement.
One of the things that really struck me in our conversations with Jonathan was his encouragement to Christians to trade in a strategic imagination for a tactical imagination.
Since Constantine the church has primarily worked with a strategic imagination, an imagination built around taking control, getting the reins of power, and then building something to make the world a better place. The impulse here is utopian but it quickly runs aground when the institutions this impulse creates cannibalize the movement, dissipating the Spirit in mission statements, committee work and layers of bureaucracy.
Jonathan's argument is that Jesus didn't have a strategic imagination. Jesus didn't come with a social program or political platform. In fact, in the temptations Jesus rejects the strategic, programmatic, power-grabbing, empire-building and institutional approach. According to Jonathan Jesus's imagination was tactical rather than strategic.
The tactical approach assumes you don't have the power. It's a form of subversion and guerrilla-warfare.
The heart of the Christian tactical imagination, in the words of Jonathan, aims "to interrupt the world." A tactical imagination is characterized by "social engagement as an interruption of the status quo." The goal of this interruption is eschatological in nature: "the interruptions remind us that there is hope, that another world is possible." The interruption is "a sign that points us to the Kingdom."
I'd argue that Jesus's recommendations in the Sermon on the Mount--turn the other cheek, go the second mile--are examples of Jesus's tactical approach, methods of resistance and interruption coming from the margins that point to the coming of the Kingdom. Jonathan focused on the woman at Bethany who anoints Jesus prior to his death--a story told in all four gospels. The woman's actions were a tactical interruption of the status quo, a subversive inbreaking of the Kingdom. The woman interrupts and goes to a place where she shouldn't go and does a thing that she shouldn't do to name Jesus as Lord and King. That, for Jonathan, is the heart of tactical Christian social engagement: Going to places where you shouldn't go and doing something there you shouldn't do to name Jesus as Lord and King. This might involve civil disobedience, but Jonathan sees this very broadly. For example, I'd argue that my recent action in relation to my own church was an attempt at a tactical interruption.
After the woman anoints Jesus he says, "Truly I tell you, wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her." According to Jesus the actions of this woman are to be forever linked to the proclamation of the gospel. According to Jonathan this suggests that the proclamation of the gospel will always function as a tactical interruption to the status quo.
The gospel is "an invitation to be an interruption."
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Update: Here is a post over at Mark's blog--"Hospitality as Power"--offering some of his reflections about our time in Durham with his students.
