The Last Missionary - Review

Given that Stephen the Levite had two of the dopest, most compelling and convicting contributions to Lampmode's recent The Church compilation -- the tracks Membership and Church Discipline -- it's appropriate that his long-awaited sophomore LP is heavily centered on that same subject. In fact, the title of the album, The Last Missionary, is a reference to the church, and the doctrine of the Church is expounded on throughout the majority of the album.

Over a luscious and lustrous beat, the album opens with The First Missionary, which is a reference to the Triune God's missional character as expressed in Genesis in the act of creation itself, but especially in God's presence in the Garden, dwelling with the first humans and delivering the 'protoevangelium'. This track seems to have had a foreshadowing in DJ Official's fantastic posse cut Not My Own, which features a verse by Stephen that covers similar ground.[1] Stephen delivers some stunning rhymes packed with rich theological content and structural beauty, carefully crafting his syllables with alliterative affects.

There are two scriptural analogies which primarily define the doctrine of the Church: the Church as the Body of Christ and the Church as bride, Christ as bridegroom (or Christ as the eschatological Adam and the Church as the eschatological Eve). While Stephen utilizes both in various ways throughout the album, on the track Voltron his verse brings the two together. Voltron is, obviously, a venerable cultural touchstone for hip-hop which symbolizes separate, distinct individuals coming together to act cooperatively toward one common mission or purpose, with the analogy to the Body of Christ being obvious. But as I said, Stephen really effectively brings the two analogies together in his verse: "[Adam] even cleaved to Eve, she's his own now / And he is hers, Jesus and the Church be the pronouns (Engaged) / Committed to mission till the big day / The bridegroom will arrive soon, until then wait (Harvest) / Workin' like the first in the garden / The last Eve, sowin' that seed, she is all of us".

On another posse cut, Wrote It This Way featuring Lampmode label-mates Timothy Brindle and Hazakim, the emcees explore the ways that the Body can (and must be) diverse, while not being divided. Brindle delivers a typically stellar verse which celebrates the multiethnic nature of his own family unit as a microcosm for the truth that God sent His Son for all people, of every tongue, tribe, and nation. Stephen's verse might be even better and he sets it off with a flourish: "Christ's blood has identified us / Doesn't uniform us, but it unifies us / We can be diverse but still not be divided / We would be deformed if everyone was like us". He goes on to excoriate the notion that 'unity' means arbitrary conformity to some cultural identity, rather than unity in Christ as the distinct, diverse people that He created us to be.    

The theme of Christ as bridegroom and the Church as bride is explored further on tracks such as S.O.S. and Beauty and The Beast. The former track does so implicitly as Stephen writes a song that is about his literal love and appreciation for his actual wife, but in the context of the album the track gains added depth, given what the institution of marriage is meant to teach us about the Church. The latter track explores the theme in a more explicit manner, telling the story of Christ and the Church in an extended metaphor.

The titular, final track of the album reflects the opener, and an analogy is thereby drawn between God's missional character and that of the Church, the last missionary. Stephen releases a torrent of sensational rhymes over a slamming beat while bringing the themes of the album to fruition in spectacular fashion.  

Throughout the album the aesthetic and artistic qualities are absolutely top notch. On the rapping side of things, Stephen's lyricism is incredible as he packs intense doses of luminous content into his bars while marshaling intricate rhyme schemes and a breathless, masterful flow. Just listen to the way he absolutely dismantles a track like Reign & Rebellion -- phenomenal.

The beats are excellent for the most part, and range from old school, stripped down tracks like Enter:missionary and Fight Club to more complex, robust tracks which dominate the album. The delicious cherry on top of all this is the fact that the album is almost entirely devoid of any R&B or otherwise sing-y choruses, and often features insanely ill turntablism instead, such as on Rehoboam and Dividing Lies. If you're fond of the brand of raw, 'East Coast', grimy, boom-bap that has always been my muse, then this should suit your tastes ideally as well.

While I enjoyed Stephen the Levite's first album To Die is Gain, I felt it was a little rough around the edges and the production was somewhat lacking. Here he steps into the forefront of currently working hip-hop artists -- holy or secular -- with a well-polished, intelligent, challenging and edifying record that keeps your head nodding incessantly, both to the beat and in agreement. Not only that, but he has gone the extra mile and successfully crafted a true album, with a unified theme and message, and one that is vitally important for the world today: the Church is Christ's physical representation on Earth and the means for extending God's Grace to the world and establishing his kingdom, so it's incumbent upon us to repeat the act of Grace shown at the cross, and be salt and light to a world in need of redemption. Or, to quote Stephen one final time: "If you’re a Christian then you’re a member of / His physical witnesses sent to finish His mission up / Paul would call us His body with many limbs and functions / workin’ and servin’ till He returns in the endin’ but / Give it up! / until His Kingdom comes and the mission's done / we volitionally and sacrificially give Him us / (Get ‘em bruh) This is something we struggle with and it's tough / but much is required from us because we’ve been given much".

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[1] As a somewhat nitpick-y theological aside: Both Phanatik on Not My Own and Stephen on The First Missionary speak of God in mutable terms i.e. pre-creation 'conferencing' within the Godhead and 'coming to decisions' about how to create, or how to solve some problem etc. Given the limitations of language and of the rap format, I don't have a huge problem with the artistic license invoked here, but it is technically incorrect; because of God's immutability any talk of Him 'coming to decisions' is an anthropomorphism. This is not to deny the existence of divine counsel or community within the Godhead, only to affirm God's immutability.

McLaren Follow-Up

Following my previous post documenting the heinous, grievous offense that was visited upon me by Brian McLaren, I was curious to see if any future comments on his page would also be deleted, but I wasn't planning on forcing the issue. If I saw something worth commenting on on McLaren's page I would,  and then wait to see what happened. Just by chance, the very next day he posted a promotional image for his new eBook that evoked a response from me:

Of course, it is true that God is both pro-human and pro-Christian. Although, taken alone, these words on the billboard seem to imply, or at least can give the impression, that God's relationship to humanity at large is exactly the same as His relationship with His Church, which is not true, as even a cursory examination of the New Testament reveals. But that's not really a fair point of contention to bring up in such a context since it's not explicit in the text of the billboard. However, the somewhat bizarre choice of scripture reference, John 3:16, is not one that really makes the point the billboard is making very clearly at all, and in fact mitigates against it in a certain way. So I wanted to make this point, and being aware of the possibility that my comment might disappear, I screen-capped it so that I could remember my exact words, just in case:

 John 3:16 is the best verse the billboard makers could come up with in support of its claim? Really? I mean, if that verse stopped after the "For God so loved the world" clause that would kind of make sense, but when it goes on to have implicit clauses that whoever doesn't believe will 'perish' and will not 'inherit eternal life' then... yeah, there are many other verses that would better illustrate this point.

Again I'm contesting something on his page, something that he and collaborators came up with, but this time in an even milder 'tone' than before. This time the quote remained for a while, and one other commenter echoed my point, at which point McLaren came back and said:

Good point on John 3:16, everyone. We're going to update the image based on your good suggestion.

Quite the change from being scrubbed from the "conversation" to getting him to change his work in response to a comment of mine. Later in the day he posted an updated version of the billboard. Here is the result:

Maybe my more gentle tone made the difference. It's also possible McLaren read my previous post (I tagged him in a tweet with a link to the piece on it). Or he may just have found the previous comments objectionable and not this one. Whatever the case, at least this new tack of his is consistent with his devotion to the god of "conversation".

That's no great consolation in the big picture, however, as it is somewhat disturbing that, when faced with an apparent conflict between the message of his billboard and John 3:16, the immediate response is not to scrap the billboard, but to scrap John 3:16.

Emergent Hypocrisy

 When the hallmark of your public ministry is to advocate for the value of "conversation" and "dialogue", it seems it would behoove you to partake in "conversation", or at least not stomp it out wherever it might crop up.

Brian McLaren, one of the figureheads of the 'emergent' movement and its de facto leader of sorts (although the movement is too nebulous for such a concept to officially apply), loves conversation. "Conversation" is one of his -- and the movement's -- favorite words. In fact, one of the primary titles for the movement is the "Emergent Conversation". He's particularly fond of "starting a conversation" on some topic (preferably a "new" topic). In a way, it is what lies at the very heart of what he and the emergent movement claims to be about.

Isn't it strange, then, that the "dialogue" and "conversation" fetishist McLaren deletes Facebook comments that express any degree of mild dissent with a certain fascistic zeal? If you are all about conversation, if you recognize the value of people from diverse backgrounds exchanging ideas on a wide range of topics, then why stop conversations before they start?

As you're probably wondering what I'm talking about, here's what happened: I follow McLaren on both Facebook and Twitter, where he mostly posts links to his blog. Full disclosure: I'm a conservative Christian and he's a very liberal one. I follow him because I think it's a good thing to be apprised of the full spectrum of ideas out there on various subjects, and he represents a certain vision and perspective that I'm not a fan of, but which I think it is healthy to stay in -- I don't know -- dialogue with. As it turns out, monologue is more like it.

After following him for a while and never really interacting on any of his posts then, 3 or 4 months ago, I did respond to something he posted. It was a quote by Abraham Lincoln, and while I can't remember it or find it on Google, the very rough gist of the quote was that each generation has to summon up the courage and resources to face new problems with new solutions from within themselves, or from within a community, while not relying on tradition or inherited wisdom. Something along those lines. This is a common theme in McLaren's work too, though it seems like a naive superstition to me, but I digress since I don't have the specific quote and that really isn't the point.

I responded to the quote by simply stating "This proves conclusively that even very bright people can sometimes say dumb things." That's all. I disagreed with the quote, and expressed my disagreement in a fairly benign way, I thought, but the comment got deleted while the dozens of banal affirmations -- "right on!", "this is a great quote" etc. -- remained. The lover of conversation seems to only like when the other end of the conversation is saying something he likes and agrees with.

I didn't think much about it at the time and shrugged it off. Then, a few days ago, I happened to respond to something he posted again without even thinking about the earlier episode. This account will have far more detail, since -- though my comment is now lost and will have to be approximated -- the post it was in response to is still near the top of his page. He posted a quote from his new eBook:

"Nostalgia is never a good leadership strategy...Now is the time for Democrats to humble themselves, to be born again not as a party of nostalgic governance, but as a party of visionary leadership." -Ruth Schwartz (from Word of the Lord to Democrats ebook)

As you can see, there's a vague resemblance between this quote and the Abraham Lincoln quote -- abandon the past, claim the present/future -- though I didn't think of that at the time. The way he had advertised this book was as some sort of satirical take on the current political season. It's difficult to see how something so banal and dull could possibly be found in any decent work of satire, much less be worth excerpting as a notable quotable, but that isn't the point I made in comment. I will attempt to reconstruct my comment from memory as closely as possible:

Platitudinous, empty rhetoric that wouldn't be out of place on an Obama '08 campaign sticker. 

The real problem the Democrats have isn't excessive nostalgia, it's a deficit of nostalgia. This was once the party of JFK and now it's a ragtag assemblage of hacks who have abandoned the party's earlier, more noble ideals. Not that everyone can be a JFK, of course, he's just the exemplar of what the party used to stand for, as opposed to what it has accomplished by forging ahead in 'new directions'.

Once again the comment was deleted while all the effusive praise remained unmolested.

This time, at least, I was fairly contentious and was responding to something he had worked on. Nevertheless, as the torch-bearer for "conversation" and "dialogue", this seems well within the bounds of civil discourse so it's hard to see how he might defend deleting the comment.

Now, I want to point out what I hope is obvious: these are very insignificant episodes in and of themselves. After all, I find it quite absurd when people equate someone policing their own Facebook page, according to their own standards, with "censorship", as often happens. This is as preposterous as claiming someone erasing graffiti -- even if it happened to be a lovely mural -- from the wall around their property is an instance of "censorship." No, I have no problem with someone erasing Facebook comments from their page for any reason at all; whether it's to keep vulgarity off your page, or if you want no trace of "negativity" anywhere on your page, or if you capriciously and randomly remove comments, all of that is absolutely fine with me. It's your page, after all.

Obviously the issue here is rank hypocrisy, in deleting comments that express dissent while proclaiming that "conversation" is one of your highest ideals. As Jay-z once said: "We don't believe you, you need more people!"

The reason I find this significant is because of just how pervasive the totalitarian impulse is within liberalism, while ironically, simultaneously existing alongside the exhortation for people be tolerant. It's bigger than Brian McLaren's hypocrisy, it's symptomatic of a very wide swath of liberalism, which professes tolerance, and a love of diversity, and revels in the joy of "conversation", but which simply can't stand the sound of a conservative or traditionalist speaking, and will even silence them if it's within their power to do so.