Book reviews
The Dishonest Church
Few would disagree with the fact that one of the most significant developments in Christianity in recent decades has been the continuing upsurge of the religious right. The USA presidential election campaign brought this home to many of us on this side of the Atlantic. We know all too well how a socially conservative, biblically literal interpretation of Christianity has and continues to dominate and evangelism, not least to school and university students.
From across the Atlantic comes this timely and well argued analysis of the Church by an ordained pastor of the United Church of Christ in the USA.
Jack Good describes the divide between popular and academic Christianity which he believes drives the current crisis in the Church. He sees popular Christianity as rejecting advanced scientific knowledge, idolizing scripture, offering to insecure people who are chaos – intolerant, security in a Jesus and a set of dogmatic assertions which fail the test of serious academic scrutiny. The tragedy is in the dishonesty of the leadership in the Church to share insights from the academics which might give offence to the laity. In the meantime there is a continuous exile of articulate people leaving the Church which they find to be irrelevant and intolerant.
An honest Church would stop treating people in childish ways; a progressive Christianity could and does harness the depth of academic facts to the energy of popular Christianity. A pastor and a congregation can together discover new ways of reading the Bible with intelligence, of rediscovering the historical Jesus, of affirming the ultimate mystery of God and the inadequacies of our religious language. For me the most attractive chapter was on Jesus. Here Good highlights the continuing picture of Jesus presented in popular Christianity and in the biblical record, studied in depth. An honest Church, Good says, will stop teaching and preaching as if Jesus were a fixed answer, … instead the honest Church will celebrate the fact that Jesus invited us to be part of a search and to accompany him on the way.
This book comes as an important contribution to the debate about what kind of church do we wish to see in this millennium. And Jack Good’s answer is – an honest one!
Reviewer - Adrian Alker