Ketuvim: the Writings of James R. Getz Jr.

Born in Reading, PA, I grew up in an independent Bible church, attending the fundamentalist Christian school attached with this church. While this environment endowed me with a copious knowledge of the Bible, it also imparted on me a fundamentalist worldview and biblical hermeneutic. Most of my teachers graduated from Bob Jones University or Pensacola Christian College and brought this understanding of the world into every subject — from Bible to history, science to art. In short I was a teenage fundamentalist.

However, by high school I routinely found myself in trouble as it became harder and harder to correlate what the Bible said with what I was being taught. I became concerned that while I must interpret Gen 1-11 and the whole of the book of Revelation literally, Jesus’ words on the Sermon on the Mount or to the Rich Young Ruler were to be taken metaphorically or “not for today.” Additionally, it was explained that while Jesus was indeed the “Prince of Peace” and said “blessed are the peacemakers,” this in no way pertained to the church today, who were rather to support the president and his “Peacemaker” missiles.

This tendentious hermeneutic has led to a lifelong searching of the biblical texts. While I had never seriously considered attending a Christian university, studying the Bible, or becoming a scholar, all this changed one fateful day at a large Christian music event in central PA. A group of recruiters from Oral Roberts University had a table setup near a concessions stand. Looking at the cookie-cutter students giving cookie-cutter answers to hard questions made me wonder if there was another, more authentic way. It was my first conscious understanding of the “Christian Ghetto” and marked a change in my life.

For some reason, I felt inextricably drawn to study the Bible. At first this was under the misunderstanding that I was going to be a pastor, but soon enough it became clear that my talents lie in the academy not in the pulpit.

On an ecclesiastical level, this shift resulted in worshiping with the Hopewell Mennonites in my last high school years. Later this searching led me to Pasadena Mennonite Church and most recently to Circle of Hope in Philadelphia. While I have had stints amongst other denominational groups (e.g. the AoG and ABC), I consider myself an Anabaptist first and foremost.

While my new found Anabaptist zeal almost led me to Goshen College, I actually wound up at Eastern College. It was there that I cut my theological teeth, learning theology with Chris Hall and biblical studies with several scholars, including Ken Maahs and Ray van Leeuwen. I also met an amazing and beautiful theology major with whom I spent many hours debating the minutia of Patristic theology and the sociology of religion. Soon after graduation we were married by Eastern’s Chaplain Joe Modica. We’ve now been married for over a decade and seem to have no end to our theological discussions. A situation that makes me immensely happy.

I was at Eastern when Mark Noll published The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, a treatise that many of my generation found inspiring. It was a rallying cry for Evangelicalism to leave the Christian Ghetto and become true scholars.

However, while I was at Fuller Seminary — learning theology with Miroslav Volf, biblical studies with Leslie Allen, Mignon Jacobs, John Goldingay — Evangelicalism sold the farm to the Republican Party. By the time I wound up in a Ph.D. program at Brandeis University, Evangelicalism had become synonymous with white, suburban Republicans; and the scandal of the Evangelical mind had begun once more in earnest as Evangelicalism gave up truth for power and being “in the world and not of it”, for merely being of the world and not in it.

Today I would identify myself first and foremost as an Anabaptist. While having ties to both the emerging church and the wider post-evangelical movement, I have more often than not found these groups mere parodies or reactions to the groups they are attempting to leave. Like Lot’s wife they find themselves immobilized by looking back at what they were attempting to flee. I find most of my friends leaving these movements, and like myself, identifying with older traditions rather than the cookie-cutter mass-market appeal of American Religion. May we always seek truth over power, the Kingdom over mere Christendom!