Why 1 Peter?

From time to time people ask me why I am doing doctoral research on 1 Peter? My short answer is two-fold:

(1) My primary interest in 1 Peter is directly related to my work as a missionary in Latin America, especially in Cuba. First Peter has a lot to say to Christians who suffer, who daily experience social ostracism because they follow Jesus.

(2) First Peter challenges the deepest assumptions of many Christians in the West, who have lived for long periods of time without social ostracism and persecution for their faith, and who have perhaps confused the American way of life, or the British way of life, with God's will for the world. We in the US and the UK need to hear the message of 1 Peter. I hope that my research will, in some way, contribute to a reawakening and, if need be, a re-appropriation of the letter's message.

Joel Green has recently written a commentary on 1 Peter. The following quote nicely captures the twin reasons why I think 1 Peter is an important book:

First Peter is addressed to folks who do not belong, who eke out their lives on the periphery of acceptable society, whose deepest loyalties and inclinations do not line up very well with what matters most in the world in which they live. This is not the sort of life that most people find attractive. In terms of our ability genuinely to understand 1 Peter, all of the linguistic skills we might develop, all of the material on historical background we might accumulate--none of this will make up for the basic reality that, as a whole, we resist the possibility that this letter is addressed to us, that we might be cast as "nobodies in the world". The problem is theological. What separates us from 1 Peter is not "the strange world of the Bible" as much as its unhandy, inconvenient claims on our lives...1 Peter invites a reading among those who are ready to embrace the identity and status of exiles in the dispersion [1 Pet 1.1].

Joel Green, 1 Peter (The Two Horizons New Testament Commentary), 18.