Are you a SOF member who fears that we are too closely emulating the United States? Are you puzzling over how to induce friends, neighbours, relations or wider communities into a critically informed faith sufficient to bring about change in their own lives, and those of others? Does examining an issue in a form slightly distanced offer the possibility of a fresh perception for you? If so, then perhaps this slim book is for you.
The author is the founding pastor, from 2008, of the Community Christian Church (CCC) in Springfield, Missouri, USA. Sited in a modern prosperous-looking suburb, CCC boasts its own website (www.spfccc.org), has a presence on Facebook and its pastor’s sermons are available both on YouTube (CCCSpringfield) and on iTunes (Progressive Faith Sermons).
Progressive Faith and Practice, subtitled Thou shall not stand idly by, is perhaps best understood as being its author’s personal manifesto. The book has 16 short chapters. The first half describes the author’s view of ‘progressive’ Christian faith, set out as answers to questions such as: What do progressives mean when we say ‘God’? What is scripture to us? Which Jesus do we hold dear? What are the religions of the world to us? What do we do when we gather as a community? Shall we still pray? Theologically panentheist, and broadly adopting a consensual position as regards biblical scholarship, the book is written in a conversational style with a minimum use of technical terms or, if used, explained. The author draws favourably on John Shelby Spong and upon the late Marcus Borg, but yet sees the gospels as ‘messages of spiritual instruction’. Reading the first part of the book will be enriched, for some, by referring to the history of CCC, as told on their website, revealing an early concern with poverty, both local in Springfield and also in Nicaragua.
The second part of the book is a critical evaluation of Western, particularly American, national life. There are chapters of trenchant criticism on environment, war, law, prison and poverty. The discussion is up-to-date, offers detail, and is supported by well-regarded comment, particularly in politics and economics and drawing, for example, upon Naomi Klein and Paul Krugman.
So described, both parts of the book are clear, very accessible and can be confidently recommended for a variety of study groups. As to the connection there might be between the two parts of the book, i.e. the relevance of the church(es) to bring about social, economic and political change (your reviewer declares his own scepticism in this area), this feature is not treated separately but is distributed throughout. For example, declaring his relation to the Jesus movement, Roger Ray writes of three things that ‘keep us tethered to Jesus’. He lists them in order of ascending importance as, first, ‘helping us to understand ourselves through rituals around birth, coming of age, marriage, illness, and death and in the processes of living within families and societies’. Second, religion ‘gives us a language, a set of stories and ideas that allows us to communicate with one another about meaningful living’. Third and finally, ‘and most importantly, between the stripped-down view of the historical Jesus and the exalted presentation of the magical Christ stands a Jesus who is a loving advocate of the poor, sick and vulnerable, and who challenges the power and abusive practices of the rich and of all empires’.
Perhaps revealing his own scepticism about the connections between the two parts of his book, Roger Ray concludes his writing with the following remark, which includes an individualistic view drawn from the Holocaust victim and Nobel Prizewinner Elie Wiesel: ‘I hope that new, more relevant, more prophetic and honest communities of faith will rise up from the ruins of a failed form of modern Christianity, but whether the church, as a viable institution, survives or not, persons of conscience must not stand idly by.’
David Lambourn is SOF Membership Secretary.
By Roger L. Ray. Wipf & Stock (Eugene, OR 2014). Pbk. 130 pages. £12.