Author RODNEY CLAPP
Publisher IVP
ISBN 0-8308-1655-0
First published in 1993 and no longer in print this book is still worth trying to find
secondhand. Anything by this particular author is good to read, he has something to
say to the churches in our generation and is erudite, interesting and challenging. This
particular offering was written when he was in his thirties and in it he takes aim at
what is still the rather water tight view that the traditional ideas of family as taught in
the United States especially in the churches these last fifty or so years are in fact
Biblical. He proves quite decisively that this model is more redolent of the middle
class nineteenth century ‘bourgeois’ family than that which was to be found in the
Old Testament and in the New too. The worship of family and family values has
been to the fore in evangelicalism. The title of one organization is suggestive “Focus
on the family”. But was the family and home life both encouraged and lived by the
early church the comfortable safe bastion of close kinship and care promoted today?
Where parents spur their children on to great feats of education, sports and other
forms of expertise and these children become the center of the mother’s world. This
book takes us beyond traditional and modern options and provides a helpful, Biblical
framework that will be new to a number of readers. We must reconfigure our family
and home life along the lines of the things revealed in the scriptures. Open homes
given to hospitality and to care of the stranger, as well as feeding and nourishing ‘our
own,’ are not so common as they should be. They were the Biblical norm. Clapp
conclusively proves that advanced capitalism has profoundly damaged the true
Christian family. The values of the world have come into the home and have
produced a misshapen family. Children are not welcomed, or it they are, it is only
within the limitations of that which will not upset the obtaining of the comfortable
success of career. Strangers are not gathered in, church and home are frequently
viewed as separate compartments of life and the latter is regarded as sacred precinct
into which anyone different or in need is not welcome. There is plenty to think about
in this older book and much of its material remains pertinent in these days. The title
of one of the chapters perhaps sums up its challenge, “Church as First Family.”
Multitudes of Christian families would argue with that, the parents would say that the
first family is ‘my family, my husband, wife and children.’ So, if you can find it get a
copy of this and check out the section at the back where Rodney Clapp points us to
the many sources that contributed to his thought.
