Curtis W. Freeman, Undomesticated Dissent: Democracy and the Public Virtue of Religious Nonconformity (Baylor, 2017)
This new book from Baptist theologian Curtis Freeman emerged from an unplanned visit in 2005 to Bunhill Fields in London, where he discovered the graves of John Bunyan, Daniel Defoe and William Blake (amongst other nonconformists). These three are centrally placed in the courtyard and Freeman began to wonder why these three. The book then offers an exploration into each of their lives and their respected great works - Pilgrim's Progress, Robinson Crusoe and Jerusalem. In this way Freeman tells a story of dissent and the dissenting church in England, which spread to new shores, partly through the works of Bunyan, Defoe and Blake. Freeman is a great story-teller, already evidenced in his earlier work Contesting Catholicity, and Undomesticated Dissent continues to invite the reader into the world of its subjects. In this way Freeman follows the example of his mentor Jim McClendon (and most notably his work Biography as Theology), to whom Freeman dedicates this book in 'blessed memory'.
Dissent, says Freeman, is not just the 'courage to say No!', it is also 'grounded in a profound 'Yes!' to Jesus Christ (p.5), and it is both this yes and no that saw other Christians and the state seek to domesticate those who were dissenters. Freeman explores how, in different ways, Bunyan, Defoe, and Blake each sought to resist the domestication placed upon them and their communities. Here I must also note the detail in Freeman's story telling which is amazing. Reading the footnotes sees Freeman has found a vast range of sources to tell his story. From his readings of Progress, Crusoe and Jerusalem, Freeman goes on to tell the story of their reception history, which again, in different ways, sought to domesticate the account of dissent in each of the works. Bunyan's Progress was turned into a generalised evangelical account of conversion, translated globally by missionaries, and so something of the social context of the work was lost, although, even here Freeman suggests that some readers caught the theme of dissent. Defoe's Crusoe became a manual for growing up and even something of a capitalist tract! The religious dissent within the book again overlooked, but it remained an inspiring text for the likes of Carey and other global missionaries and it remains an example of the difficulties of dissent once persecution gets (partially) lifted. Blake's Jerusalem (the long poem often confused with the short poem that prefaced Blake's Milton. The latter which became the famous nationalistic hymn) is an apocalyptic vision that challenged both church and state of the day, it is the most powerfully undomesticated in its dissent.
Freeman's final chapter explores how dissent has continued through the likes of Roger Williams, Martin Luther King, Clarence Jordan and Wendell Berry, before offering some reflections that Baptists and others might make in recovering an undomesticated dissent in their own time. All the more pressing in the context of Trump and the responses of those like Rod Dreher's Benedict Option. This makes Freeman's book especially timely.The story of dissent in each case is apocalyptic and here Freeman makes some connections with the interest in apocalyptic readings of Paul and the New Testament. There seems potentially a further fruitful dialogue here to be had. He argues their is no blueprint for dissent, only the examples of other those stories he has told (and others), from which he says conviction, conscience and community are important.
Baptists have largely lost the language and the practice of dissent. Our dissent - if any remains - has become domesticated. Christian faith and witness is private rather than public, it has largely coalesced with capitalism and is decidedly un-apocalyptic. Here attention to the tradition of Bunyan, Defoe and Blake becomes potentially vital to a declining church, if it is to recover the gospel of Jesus Christ that gave life to its forebears, and it is to continue, thorough God's grace to survive and flourish. And following the argument of Freeman's Contesting Catholicity, this tradition of dissent, suggests Freeman, might be one of the gifts Baptists and other nonconformists have to offer the wider church.
With this new book, Freeman sits as one of the most important Baptist voices (at least for the Western world) at present. Baptists worldwide would benefit of reading Freeman's Contesting Catholicity and Undomesticated Dissent together. They offer a compelling Baptist vision, rooted in our tradition, and compelling for our present. We can but hope that Freeman continues to write and offer his insights, retrieved from our past, for a church that is convicted by apocalyptic good news of Jesus Christ. Likewise, others beyond the Baptist (and even Christian) fold, will find in Freeman someone who tells the story of a largely overlooked people called Baptists, have much to challenge and encourage the wider church and world.
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