THE FULLNESS OF TIME IN A FLAT WORLD

Best-selling author Thomas Friedman says that globalization has made the world flat and that we cannot stop the process. But while it is right to say that globalization tends to flatten our world, it is wrong to say that there are no alternatives to current patterns of economic, ecological, political, and cultural integration. This book argues that the Christian liturgical calendar provides a constructive alternative to the globalization of economics, ecologies, politics, and cultures. It does so by incorporating the church into the fullness of time in the gospel narrative, thereby helping us escape from the dead end of Friedmans flat world so that we can improvise healthier ways of being globally integrated. We usually think of globalization as a matter of space--a shrinking globe, porous boundaries, flows of capital. In an insight that is jarring and brilliant, Scott Waalkes argues that globalization is also a matter of time. Diagnosing the corrosive construals of time and space in globalized consumer capitalism, Waalkes shows how ancient Christian practices of time-keeping can remake our world and our economic habits, apprenticing us to the One born in the fullness of time. A stellar book that deserves wide attention. --James K. A. Smith author of Desiring the Kingdom