We are bound to acknowledge, in expositing this alternative narrative, that it, like the imperial narrative, is not an ontological given. The baptismal narrative that evokes and legitimates neighborly community is also a social construction, a proposal, an advocacy, a possibility that depends upon and assures the conviction that the narrative of empire has no prior claim upon us. Thus this alternative narrative joins issue with the imperial narrative. It is not an even contest or a level playing field. The imperial narrative has many advantages at the outset, not least that we are all to some
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