A Review of AFTER THE GOOD NEWS

I recently had the privilege (and good fortune) of being asked to read and review the Rev. Nancy McDonald Ladd's new book, After the Good News:  progressive faith beyond optimism (Skinner House Books).  I was going to read it anyway -- Nancy is one of my favorite Unitarian Universalist writers -- so I was excited to know even before I'd even started I had already been asked for my opinion!

After the Good News is easily one of the most important books I’ve read in a long time – it should be required reading for every religious professional (ordained or otherwise) who is serving a faith community that considers itself liberal or progressive, as well as each and every member.  In fact, after reading just her Introduction I found myself seeing the liberal tradition I serve with new eyes, and challenged to change because of it.

With her usual self-depreciating humor, solid scholarship, and a willingness to prophetically challenge people she so clearly loves (among whom she explicitly includes herself), Nancy lays out the roots and present ramifications of the, 

“oft-unacknowledged arc of history that doesn’t seem quite so triumphant; a narrative of the liberal church that stands counter to the rampart-holding optimism we proclaim in our most stirring hymns.”  

In cogent and lucid prose she makes sense of the confounding resistance to efforts for real change experienced even among congregations that are calling for it.  She makes clear why it is so difficult for so many people in liberal and progressive faith communities to recognize and acknowledge ourselves (particularly those of us who identify or are identified as white) as participating in and perpetuating the very systems and structures of white supremacy we are so committed to ending (even if unconsciously and unwittingly).  In fact, she explains that it is our very enthusiastic optimism and faith in the vision of "Beloved Community," important as it is, that can make us oblivious to the luxury, the privilege we have to keep ourselves at a distance from the reality of the suffering oppression has caused historically and causes still.  

Yet After the Good News does not simply convict liberal and progressive religious traditions for their inability to recognize their own complicity in maintaining the injustices we would end.  It also provides a pathway by which these traditions can evolve beyond their past in order to live more fully into the vision of Beloved Community we espouse.   

“If liberal religion is to step into a future of engaged, anti-oppressive work,” she writes, “we will be called to serve not only because others are broken or the system is broken, but because, as Bryan Stevenson says, ‘I am broken too.’” 

The empowering and inspiring vision is important, yet Nancy calls us to move beyond our ingrained optimism and to recognize the work of liberation as not just for those who have been marginalized by society, but for us all.  As the Indigenous Australian academic, artist, and activist Lilla Watson has written, 

"If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is tied up with mine, then let us work together."

To do this will be hard, painful, and disorienting, and Nancy is clear about how challenging this transformation will be.  Ultimately, though, she is hopeful because of her faith in, and very obvious love of, the people who make up these liberal/progressive traditions.  After the Good New delivers a prophetic message that will be extremely difficult for some to receive, yet which is fundamentally a message of hope.  After reading it, my hope is renewed and deepened as well.

After the Good News:  Progressive Faith Beyond Optimism is available from inSpirit (the UUA's bookstore), as well as through Amazon (as both a paperback and an ebook),  BarnesandNoble.com, and GooglePlay.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

Teacher, Guide, Companion Ten Years Later

Ten years ago Teacher,Guide, Companion:  rediscovering Jesus ina secular age came out.  It was my first book, and my first collaboration with the good folks at Skinner House Books.  It seems like a wonderful opportunity to look back at what I thought then and what I'd say now if I were to write it again.  There is a marvelous story about Ralph Waldo Emerson.  In his later life he was sometimes was asked to give readings of one or another of his earlier essays.  It is said that as he did so he would occasionally look up and say, "I no longer believe this."  He would then return to his reading.  As I prepared to reconsider Teacher, Guide, Companion I was hoping I wouldn’t have to say "I no longer believe this" too often.

The good news is – I didn’t.  Thanks in very large part to Ms. Mary Benard, Senior Editor at Skinner House, it’s a very readable book.  The prose is clean, and the ideas flow smoothly.  The structure I used for this "rediscovery" came from a passage in the Gospel of Mark.  Jesus is remembered as asking his disciples, "Who do the people say that I am?"  After his friends answer with what they’ve heard people say, he asks the more pointed question, "But who do you say that I am?"  

Teacher, Guide, Companion follows the same general pattern – beginning with what others have said about Jesus, then sharing my own perspective, and then offering suggestions for the reader’s own explorations.   I don’t think I’d change that.  One of the good things about the book is that it is so readable – I was able to re-read it over the course of one evening.  That does, however, mean that there is a lot that could have been included that wasn’t.  And that’s one of the things that I might change were I to write it again – or create an expanded edition.

The section on the historical Jesus could easily be expanded.  Details could be added to the section looking at what we learn from the study of pre-industrial agrarian societies in general, and the Judeo-Roman world at the time of Jesus in particular.  This work is mentioned, yet there could be more details about what has been learned.  Similarly, there is only a passing reference to the existence of – and questions about – a handful of references to Jesus outside of the New Testament, and there has been done some wonderful work attempting to reconstruct the earliest Christian communities.  Both of these would be worth including.  And the discoveries of Biblical archaeology wasn’t mentioned at all!

So, too, could the chapter on the images of Jesus conveyed in the five Gospels could also stand some expansion.  There are details in the Gospel stories that, if included, would have more fully illuminated each of the author’s depictions and would have helped create even greater contrast among them.  And while it was an intentional choice to limit consideration to Mark, Matthew, Luke, John, and Thomas, it would be interesting to take a look at what messages the authors of the other Gospels we have discovered – the so-called apocryphal gospels – had intended to convey.

Missing entirely is any consideration of how Jesus has been viewed (and experienced) throughout history.  This could involve looking at historic figures – Saint Francis of Assisi, say, or Mohandas Ghandi – and examining the way(s) they related to Jesus.  Or it could consider the ways Jesus has been seen in different times and different places.  Many books have been written about the ways Jesus has been depicted in art – both visual and literary – and a work like Edward Blum’s The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America looks not just at how Jesus has been depicted but how that depiction can have very real-world consequences.  (James Cone’s The Cross and the Lynching Tree is similarly eye opening.)  The insights of Liberationist and Feminist Christian traditions is missing as well.

Several scholar/theologians were introduced in the chapter about the historical Jesus – Marcus Borg, Stephen J. Patterson,  John Dominic Crossan, John Spong – yet each has, by now, written about their own personal encounter/experience with Jesus, and these are just as important as their more academic works.  And when I wrote Teacher, Guide, Companion I had not yet discovered the works of Brian McLaren, Richard Rohr, or Ilia Delio, to name just a few.

The chapter on my own personal perspectives could be expanded to include more about how experiences and view have been influenced by my particular situation as someone who was raised Presbyterian and Methodist, studied and practiced Zen Buddhism for nearly two decades, and now is an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister.  More of my wrestling with what this exploration and rediscovery means to me  – which, I will confess, has continued fairly unabated since writing the book – might also be worth including.

And then there’s the section on how the reader might conduct her or his own exploration more fruitfully.  I could imagine including what for want of a better word I’ll call “testimonials” – brief stories from readers about how their searching has unfolded.  These could provide not only more details about the various imaginative techniques that are described but also offer some encouragement and inspiration to readers.

I have to say – I have heard some truly wonderful things over the past decade from people who’ve read this book.   I am grateful to each and every person who has written to me to share what Teacher, Guide, Companion has meant to them, as well as to all the clergy and laity who have seen fit to offer workshops and book study opportunities in their congregations.  If you have questions or comments you would like to share, or suggestions for ways to continue and expand on the conversation this book started, please don’t hesitate to be in touch.

Pax tecum,

RevWik