SPIRITUALITY AND GEOGRAPHY

Christ coming among us in flesh and blood at a specific locale in first-century Judea roots the eternal message of Christianity in a context.  Christian experience must always be contextual.  The Bible itself has to be read with map in hand because God's revelation doesn't just come out the blue.  It occurs in Jerusalem, Shechem, Bethel, Galilee -- concrete places where people live and where God meets them in their place.  That's why Christianity continually resists a dualism which separates spirit from matter.  Spirituality and geography have to be joined. 

Take conversion experiences in the church's history, for example.  They're invariably place-specific.  You think of Paul on the Damascus Road; Augustine in the garden in Milan where he hears children playing, saying "Take and read"; Luther on the toilet at Wittenburg Monastery; [John Wesley at a society meeting on Aldersgate Street in London]; Thomas Merton on the corner of 4th Street and Walnut in downtown Louisville.  When each of them experiences a profound insight in the life of faith, they remember it in connection with the place where it happened.  We've not given that the attention it deserves.  In the past we've concentrated almost exclusively on time and history in biblical and theological studies.  Only in the last generation have we begun to turn to geography and place and to recognize the profound importance of that as well. 

-- Dr. Belden C. Lane in Leading from the Center, Winter 2003


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