Gerard Mannion's series, Ecclesiological Investigations, has produced impressive theological works that examine contemporary questions in ecclesiology, particularly from ecumenical and global perspectives. This work of Pascal Bazzell—a Swiss theologian and member of OMF International who spent sixteen years (1998–2014) teaching intercultural theology and serving the urban poor in Davao City, Philippines—is no exception. Bazzell's ecclesiological project is marked by the resultant blending of the academic and pastoral and the theological and sociological, in his attempt to construct an authentically Asian grassroots ecclesiology (1).
Unsurprisingly then, at the heart of Bazzell's work is the question of ecclesiological method. Answering the calls of Joseph Komonchak and, more recently, Neil Ormerod to hold theological and social data together in ecclesiology, Bazzell proposes a “local ecclesiological method” (27) that weds theoretical-oriented and idealist accounts with practice-oriented and realist accounts of church. To do so, Bazzell employs missiologist Paul Hiebert's critical contextualization method to maintain this mutually informing tension between locality and ecclesiality. Hiebert's model exegetes a culture, reads Scripture in light of questions raised in this cultural analysis, evaluates culture based on this reading of Scripture, and, from these stages, develops renewed ecclesial practices and theologies (29–33). Importantly, the end result of this method is missiological; mission is concerned more with finding, naming, and articulating church (or rather, the presence of Christ—Tertullian's ubi Christus, ibi ecclesia is a major refrain in the book) than with recruitment or creating church “from above.” Bazzell terms his approach an “ecclesial-oriented paradigm” for serving those who are homeless (18).
The book's main protagonist is a Filipino community facing homelessness (FCH) in Davao City, a community with which Bazzell has spent ten years. The historical, anecdotal, and interview data meticulously gathered from this community form the foundation of the study. Despite his familiarity with the community, Bazzell is always well aware of his outsider role—careful to listen first and thus not reinforce marginalization—in his struggle to midwife “an ecclesiology of the inarticulate” (7). This openness allows Bazzell to offer a thick description of the FCH, underscoring the centrality of kinship and, relatedly, honor and shame in FCH culture. Bazzell's own self-understanding and methodology offer valuable lessons on how to do local theology and the theologian's general task.
The theologian's work—that is, Bazzell's—continues in reading Scripture with the community. He relates the fresh insights on Mark's Gospel uncovered by the ecclesial community of the FCH (which Bazzell denotes as “FECH”), particularly its focus on Mark's familia Dei motif. Crucially, this symbol both “resonates with” and “re-orients” the community (149). It speaks to the FECH's fundamentally relational anthropology while simultaneously challenging the community to examine its overly parochial family structures and to orient the entire family structure to God. This same dynamic tension between resonance and reorientation—inculturation—is found in the FECH's reflections on honor and shame in their communities and Mark's Gospel.
Throughout the work, Bazzell effectively exhibits how to read Scripture from the margins, through the eyes of the poor, and from this, reap ecclesiological fruit. Bazzell's identification of familia Dei as the FECH's expression of being church anchors his ecclesiological method. From culture (“from below”), a symbol resonates; from theological reflection (“from above,” though rooted in below), a symbol challenges and reorients. The definition of church—in this case, familia Dei—serves as the heuristic symbol for the locus of this dynamic process of constructive and critical theology. Indeed, this is the author's “local ecclesiological method” at its best.
A project like Bazzell's is undoubtedly relevant in contemporary ecclesiological discussion. His work exhibits a concrete and healthy integration of ecclesiology with the social sciences. Unfortunately, the author would have been greatly helped by more thorough copyediting of the manuscript. Nevertheless, Urban Ecclesiology, or at least selections from it, would be most helpful in a graduate ecclesiology course that considers method or in seminary classes on urban missiology and intercultural theology. For a world filled with poverty, migration, and homelessness, and for a church continually called to be a church of the poor, to be a pilgrim church of the streets, and to mediate redemptive recovery in the world, Bazzell's work, and work like it, remain especially critical today.
