Posts in Beyond Tribalism
Formation: Purity, Disgust and the Meaning of Love

Historically, human beings have found all sorts of ways to determine who is clean and who is unclean, who is pure and holy or who is dirty and sinful. Our community becomes an extension of our body, and so if we deem someone or a group of people to become unclean or impure, then we will find ways to get them outside of our community so that we won’t become tainted by their uncleanness. Psychologically, its the same reflex as the disgust reflex, although that’s often not the language we give it.

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Formation: Christian Empire and the Roots of Exclusion

The central story of the Old Testament is about a remarkable escape of numerous Hebrew slaves from a powerful empire, while the New Testament is centred on a small group of people who follow a prophet largely rejected by his own people and executed as a criminal by the State. Whether we realise it or not, this profoundly shapes the writings of both ‘testaments’; a fact that can be commonly obscured if we read them in the light of a Christianised Western world 2,000 years later.

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Beyond TribalismClint Gibson