Listening to the Least: Doing Theology from the Outside in

Christianity claims to teach with authority, but it has supported serfdom, slavery, colonialism, anti-Semitism, the oppression of women, and other moral wrongs. Rather than making excessive claims about this authority as revelation, Ian McFarland returns to the ministry of Jesus. Like Jesus - who established authority from the outside in by including in his circle prostitutes, sinners, and tax collectors - the contemporary church, he asserts, should build a community from the margins of society.McFarland argues that any claims to authority not made in solidarity with those at the periphery of the faith community are illegitimate. Indeed, the church teaches with authority only by encouraging that very authority to be questioned by those who least share in it. In Listening to the Least, McFarland ably demonstrates how the church can claim its legitimate authority without being authoritarian.