Week 5--Barker Chapter 9: Ethnicity, Race and Nation

The new prominence given to metaphors of travel, rather than place, in cultural studies is a positive development for Christianity. This is because Christianity already has the built-in metaphors about “following Jesus” and “spiritual journeying.” These metaphors suggest an identity in process, like Barker argues to be a preferred conception of identity. The difference with Christianity is that there is an aspect of the fixed and “essential” in Christian identity (“positional righteousness” or justification), where we already essentially share the righteousness of Christ. But there is also an aspect of Christian identity that makes use of the traveling metaphors to show how we are “on our way” (sanctification and spiritual growth). Another difference is that in Christianity, the identity process we undergo is teleological. We are going somewhere.