Because I am suppose to be on summer break from school, though still in (and rather bored with) summer classes, I picked up Doug Pagitt’s freshly released book “A Christianity Worth Believing” last evening. I’ve ‘followed’ Doug and his ministry at Solomon’s Porch and writings since my own ‘shift’ three and a half years ago. I’ve always appreciated his perspective and spin on God’s Story and I’ve been waiting to get my hands on this book ever since he announced last summer that he was writing a new one.
Here’s how the book describes itself:
Pagitt, a leader in the Emergent church movement, came to faith as a teenager at a Passion play, but Christian theology often didn’t cohere with his own raw, powerful and inclusive experiences of and intuition about God. Here Pagitt tells his own story and weaves together a new theology for the Emergent movement, viewing Christian doctrine from a slightly different perspective and trying to break it out of the firm grasp of Greek thinking by returning it to its Jewish context, the way it would have been understood by first-century readers. To Pagitt, humanity’s fallen state as a result of sin should not be emphasized so much as God’s desire to partner with people to do good work in the world. The Bible is not so much about truth and error as it is a picture of God attempting to reconnect, while Jesus represents our potential to live in love and establish the kingdom of God now. Pagitt clearly articulates both the heart and theology of the Emergent movement. Conservative critics will no doubt consider this Christianity subtly twisted out of recognition, but postmodern readers struggling with current expressions of faith will see love and hope.
I’m going to try to blog/converse my way through the book as a way to digest it and sharpen my book interactive skills, though since my current rate of return on verbal blogging promises is hovering at near 1% we all might be a bit optimistic 🙂 I’ve already read through 35 pages, so check back tomorrow for some initial thoughts.
To get the ball rolling, here is a line from the first page:
I am a Christian, but I don’t believe in Christianity.
At least I don’t believe in the versions of Christianity that have prevailed for the last fifteen hundred years, the ones that were perfectly suitable in their time and place but have little connection with this time and place. The ones that answer questions we no longer ask and fail to consider questions we can no longer ignore. The ones that don’t mesh with what we know about God and the world and our place in it. I want to be very clear: I am not conflicted because I struggle to believe. I am conflicted because I want to believe differently.
Initially after reading that paragraph, here’s what I am looking for in the book:
- What are those versions of Christianity? Who’s are they and what are those versions’ ‘content’?
- Why don’t those versions throughout Christian history connect to this time and place? What exactly doesn’t connect? Is there anything that still does? Anything that we should still stay connected to in those historic versions?
- What questions did those versions answer and what were their answers?
- What are the questions our placement in history (particularly the postmodern placement) are asking? Why don’t those versions in Christianity’s history connect to our postmodern context?
- What answers no longer “mesh with what we know about God and the world and our place in it?” What DO we know about God and our world and our place in it?
- How do you want to believe differently? How does that “different” look and feel?
- What do you believe that is different or similar or the same than those versions of Christianity that no longer mesh with what we know about God and the world and our place in it?
Believe me when I say I’m not bone picking here nor witch hunting. I thoroughly agree with the “versions of Christianity” description, because as a budding historical theologian (yeah right!) I can see how all theology is contextual and historically rooted. That I get. And I think the talks of Pagittian heresy are over blown and nonsensical. But these are the questions I have after reading page 1, questions I really hope he answers, not because I want to nail him to the wall, but because I think they really deserve answering if paragraph 3 of the first page is where Doug is at.
And if the current gestation of historical theology in our postmodern context is forcing us to reconsider the “versions of Christianity” we’ve been handed by History, then we need to know what from History do we keep and what do we discard; what are the non-negotiables that History has preserved for us that mesh with what is real about God and the world and our place in it (in essence what are we to believe is real about God and His Story), and what is the chaff of History to discard as cultural nonsense.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. I’m off to read…come back soon 🙂
Trackbacks/Pingbacks