Paul Rusch In Postwar Japan. <\/em>Paul Rusch\u2019s journey began in Louisville, Kentucky and ended in the shadow of Mt. Fuji on the grounds of Seisen-Ryo, the beloved American-style camp\u00a0 that housed the Kiyosato Educational Experiment Project (KEEP), his dream. Rusch\u2019s gained his first exposure to Japan when he travelled there after the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1925. From this important personal turning point, Rusch developed as a visionary with boundless energy, a reluctant missionary who battled his own humanity, and a deep lover of the Japanese people.<\/p>\nThe book does not directly consider contemporary issues related to southern religion.\u00a0 Nonetheless, Rusch\u2019s life and work spanned important decades and engaged significant themes, including the role of the United States as a nation-builder in the post-WWII world and the Civil Rights era. Rusch blurred the lines between church and state in bringing the Japanese \u201cChristian democracy\u201d as the necessary foundation for physical and spiritual renewal and as a foil to the influences of Communism. He also called for \u201cbrotherhood\u201d between people of different ethnicities as the battle for Civil Rights wracked the southern church halfway around the world. These complexities formed a backdrop against which the legacy of the Kentucky Episcopalian emerged in all of its color, and many of these concerns still resonate within southern religion.<\/p>\n
Organized chronologically from Rusch\u2019s birth in 1897 to his death in 1979, the book weaves together history, cultural narrative, and personal accounts. The authors do not shy away from Rusch\u2019s many shortcomings\u2014his naivet\u00e9, a dogged-dedication to western cultural Christianity and the cultural superiority of the United States, struggles with alcohol, and a tendency to use people in the pursuit of his grand vision. Rusch\u2019s life and work raise perhaps more than answer questions about religion and politics, missionary methods, and the extent to which culture excuses biases and questionable practices. From Rusch\u2019s story, those committed to cross-cultural ministry and humanitarian efforts can learn the difficulty of shedding cultural biases and the pitfalls of failing to do so. As the authors astutely point out, \u201cCultural ignorance may have contributed to Rusch\u2019s boldness and audacity when it came to launching new venues, but it may have hobbled the staying power and adaptability of his work\u201d (174). On a hopeful note, one finds in this story that the church as cultural change agent is borne most often on the backs of ordinary, imperfect people.<\/p>\n
The final chapter marvelously grounds Rusch\u2019s life and KEEP\u2019s legacy in the themes of faith, help, and hope, providing common ground for a variety of readers. In the end, the authors accomplish their task of \u201cexplor[ing] Paul Rusch\u2019s contributions to the shaping of a postwar Japan and how his legacy, the Kiyosato Educational Experiment Project, continues to influence the world in the twenty-first century\u201d (8).<\/p>\n
The heightened interest in Japanese culture and history due to the country\u2019s status as host to next year\u2019s Olympics augments the timeliness of this volume. Students of history, pastors, and missions practitioners will benefit from this book. The \u2018drunken Episcopalian\u201d who left an uneven but lasting legacy offers a fascinating case study of the intersection between culture and Christianity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Review: Paul Rusch in Postwar Japan Gregory Mathias Gregory Mathias is Professor of Global Studies at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. JSR Volume 22 Cite this Article Gregory Mathias, “Review: Paul Rusch in Postwar Japan,”\u00a0Journal of Southern Religion (22) (2020): jsreligion.org\/vol22\/mathias. Open-access license This work is licensed CC-BY. You are encouraged to make free use of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1071","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jsreligion.org\/vol22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jsreligion.org\/vol22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jsreligion.org\/vol22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jsreligion.org\/vol22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jsreligion.org\/vol22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1071"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/jsreligion.org\/vol22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1071\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1111,"href":"https:\/\/jsreligion.org\/vol22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1071\/revisions\/1111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jsreligion.org\/vol22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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