Volume 17 Issue 1

Scholarly work is done in isolation—reading books, sitting at a desk, working on a computer, thinking, writing, rewriting, and more reading. Whether working on a Ph.D. dissertation, an article, a book, or a conference presentation, we function alone. Few are those we can talk to about our work. It is so specialized that even within our broader field of New Testament, Old Testament, theology, or history sometimes few of our colleagues can relate to it or to our passion about it. In this way, we are like what is said about the entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley, as put in an Apple commercial a number of years ago, "Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes." In a recent Christianity Today ("Here's to the Misfits," May 2013, pp. 44-49) article Andy Crouch quotes Silicon Valley entrepreneur Kevin Adler, who develops this further, "As human beings we have a thirst for belonging. But Silicon Valley is renowned as a valley of misfits."

Not only are we often isolated within our institutions, like those of Silicon Valley, our ideas and research tend to challenge the conventional thinking and beliefs of others around us, which can further isolate us. Yet, we crave for community.

We are starved for a community where we are welcomed to share our most edgy work and feel appreciated for it. This is the very kind of community we have been developing among scholars, both developing and mature, within the Stone-Campbell Movement. In fact our most recent booklet is titled "Building a Scholars Community." We have been doing this through Stone-Campbell Journal, our growing SCJ Conference, and our online Stone-Campbell Scholars Community. Our 2014 SCJ Conference at Johnson University reached an astounding record attendance of 402! This includes 156 actively engaged Johnson students. It was such a joy to see so many interacting and enjoying the time together.

I hope each of you are finding a way to be actively creating relationships in our bustling community of misfits. Of course, attending and participating in the conference and online community are great ways to do this. Another is to interact intentionally with the authors of our published articles. We provide the author's emails with the articles to enable this. Why not decide to email one of the authors featured in this issue with collegial encouragement, questions, or comments about their article?

This issue features some excellent articles. Kerrie Handasyde provides a compelling article about the early history of the Stone-Campbell Movement in Australia. Keith Stanglin challenges the current debate regarding Calvinism among Southern Baptists. Ben Langford develops an interesting perspective on the Lord's Supper within our era of consumerism. Katy Valentine, from a paper presented at Editor's Preface Stone-Campbell Journal 17 (Spring, 2014) 1–2 the 2013 SCJ Conference, provides a revealing interpretation of 1 Cor 10:1-13. Glenn Pemberton tales a close look at eight psalms of lament to find a fresh path of relationship with God. Finally, James Gorman edits the reviews and comments from three veteran observers of the movement regarding the new volume, The Stone-Campbell Movement: A Global History (Chalice, 2013).

William R. Baker, Editor

SCJ 17.1 Quotables

Chosen by Amy Carman
Pepperdine University

Featured Quote:

"On the one hand, one might consider such language to be a helpful catharsis, vomiting out all the anger and disappointment. But if, as Israel claims, prayer is dialogic speech with an active listener, then this awful language is not about a cathartic binge but about communication and understanding. These psalms direct their words to the Lord, Israel's covenant partner, with the expectation that he will hear and respond."

Glenn Pemberton, "When God is the Problem: From Allegation to Apologia in the Psalms," (SCJ 17.1:68)

"The story of missional transformation needs to be head among the laity, and it needs to be promoted strongly across the Conference as well as locally, in order to overcome the persistent localized and disconnected view of history. Such a shared narrative will unite people beyond the local church and articulate the movement's historical and contemporary reasons for being."

Kerrie Handasyde, "Transforming History: The Origins of the Stone-Campbell Movement in Victoria, Australia," (SCJ 17.1:18)

"Inasmuch as there is ever-increasing contact between Baptist and Stone-Campbell churches, and in a day when the controversies of the former can quickly become the controversies of the latter, churches ignore these and other related issues to their own peril."

Keith D. Stanglin, "Southern Baptist Anti-Calvinism and Eternal Security: Some Critical Questions for Dialogue," (SCJ 17.1:21)

"The consequences of giving in to the desires resonated more strongly with the Corinthians than did an emphasis from the Septuagint on idolatrous worship, an incident that was probably not well-known in the community. Paul's use of the metaphor of self-control next to the Septuagint story shows that he encouraged the Corinthians to embrace self-control even at the expense of upward mobility."

Katy E. Valentine, "First Corinthians 10:1-13 in Light of the Rhetoric of Self-Control over the Desires," (SCJ 17.1:61)

"In the Eucharist, God takes the basic goods of bread and wine and transforms them towards his own ends. God’s end - the telos of the bread and wine - is God himself in Jesus Christ. In the practice of eating the bread and drinking wine, which has become the body and blood of Jesus, human desire is directed not towards the endless consumption of goods but towards the Bread of Life."

Ben Langford, “Shaping Desire: Consumer Capitalism and the Eucharist," (SCJ 17.1:42)

"Herein lies what I suspect will be the enduring contribution of the Global History: not only that it included new information (though it does in these chapters and elsewhere) and thereby advances the historiography, but that it tells such varying micro-histories together. Surely the Global History will generate fresh exploration in as-yet uncharted territory, particularly outside North America. Beyond that, not only demonstrating that such exploration could be conceived as a joint effort across long-standing divisions, it shows how it might be pursued as witness to a unity transcending division."

McGarvey Ice, "Stone-Campbell Movement: A Global History - Reviews and Comments," (SCJ 17.1:82)