The Dishonest Church

I am a United Methodist struggling to remain a part of a church I dearly love. Among many other reasons, I belong to the UMC because I'm not expected to check my brain in the narthex. Or at least I didn't use to be. The UMC requires its ordained pastors to have no less than a masters degree from a select group of seminaries, yet we laity expect them to teach and preach as if they've never gone to school. I'm extremely proud of our commitment to biblical scholarship, continuing education, and dialogue. I think our historical-critical interpretation of holy scripture is both responsible and loving. I think the Quadrilateral is outstanding. It is absolutely heartbreaking to watch it slowly go out the window in favor of what Jack Good calls, "popular Christinity". And our steady decline in numbers is no mystery. There are already churches who interpret holy scripture literally. Mainline denominations have a much needed place in Christianity. The thousands of people who simply cannot accept a literal interpretation desperately need these churches to be who they were created to be. We need to stand up against those trying to turn us into a literal and rigid family. We need to help our laity move beyond the sunday school faith of their childhood. God is much bigger than that. And we need to appreciate our pastors who dare to honestly pass along their seminary education to us. Why would we want anything less? Too many faithful, active church members are completely unaware. And we're now so far behind the curve that our pastors are thought to be heretics when they teach and preach honestly. I wish everyone could read this book. A new publisher has started a 2nd printing and I believe this book can now be purchased through The Center for Progressive Christianity.

If asked to name the gravest scandal in American society during the last century, most Americans, I suspect, would name the Watergate affair, which brought down a President. They'd be wrong. Jack Good is an ordained pastor in the United Church of Christ, retired from decades of preaching in New York and Illinois. In "The Dishonest Church," Good reveals that most of his fellow pastors in the mainstream American churches are systematically preaching from their pulpits teachings which they themselves know to be blatant lies. Why the systematic lying? The basic problem, Good explains, is a divergence during the last several centuries between what he calls "academic" Christianity and what he dubs "popular" Christianity. As early as the Renaissance, scholars such as Erasmus began applying the intellectual tools that were being developed in science, history, etc. to better understand, purify, and solidify their Christian faith. By the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, an increasing number of scholars and intellectuals were coming to realize that Christianity could not actually be historically true. In the nineteenth century, the floodgates opened. From David Strauss's "Life of Jesus" to Albert Schweitzer's "The Quest of the Historical Jesus," scholarly research proved that the Bible was a crazy mish-mash of garbled history, Jewish mythology, and fantasies based on pagan stories of "virgin" births, resurrected savior gods, etc. By the early twentieth century, F. C. Burkitt, in an introduction to Schweitzer's famous book, could confidently assert as an established fact among educated people, "Every one nowadays is aware that traditional Christian doctrine about Jesus Christ is encompassed with difficulties, and that many of the statements in the Gospels appear incredible in the light of modern views of history and nature." How can it be that most Americans are ignorant of this? Good opens his book with a telling anecdote: "One of my clergy friends boasts of a comment he made in an interview with a pastoral search committee. A somewhat hostile member of the committee demanded to know if this prospective pastor believed in a literal virgin birth. My friend replied that his views on the virgin birth were the same as those of St. Paul. The committee member nodded approvingly, and the discussion went on to other matters." As Good explains, his friend was counting on the fact that the members of the committee would be ignorant of the fact that nowhere does St. Paul make any reference at all to the virgin birth: scholars assume Paul had no acquaintance whatsoever with the doctrine. Thus, Good's friend, who did not believe in the Virgin Birth, could "honestly" claim to hold the same view as St. Paul! Good adds, "Clergy tend to see such moments as victories over the benighted folk who occupy church pews." So, are America's pastors and religious leaders simply pathological liars? Much of the explanation, Good claims, is simply e

The first part of "The Dishonest Church" details well justified disappointment with seminary educated mainline clergy who, out of fear, preach down to their congregations the out-of-date messages they learned in Sunday school even though their own faith journeys have been significantly enriched by their seminary education. Jack Good's introduction of the terms "chaos-intolerant" and "chaos-tolerant" are helpful in understanding the popular appeals of fundamentalist churches in contrast to churches that encourage an honest struggle with issues of faith among people at diverse places along their own personal faith journeys. The other term he uses that I find helpful is "truth-story" as an alternative to the confusing term "myth" when talking about many of the biblical stories that are hard to justify as historically "true" in the light of current biblical research. The richness of language, stories, practical examples of approaches to an intellectually honest ministry, and his own evolving theological sophistication that have come from Jack Good's struggles with 40 years of pastoral ministry have made this a very helpful book for me. I found some of the very best help was in the last third of this book.

THE DISHONEST CHURCH by Jack Good, Rising Star Press, 2003 was, for me, a very exciting read. The author's argument is that in today's mainline Protestant churches (Methodist, Presbyterian, United Church of Christ, Anglican) there exists a gap of dishonesty between the clergy and the laity that is one of the causes of these churches losing membership. The gap finds its genesis in what the clergy learn in the academy (academic Christianity) and what they preach in the church (popular Christianity). As the educational levels and world experiences of the laity who have traditionally been attracted to these churches have increased, their level of "cognitive development" has moved from the early stage ("basic duality"/a child's faith) to a later stage ("relativism"/opinion independently developed); some continue to an even later stage of cognitive development ("commitment") in which not knowing all the answers is okay, mystery is acceptable. Clergy, for many reasons not the least of which is the fear of offending laity who are in the early stage, tend to preach what these people are comfortable in hearing even though it may be diametrically opposed to what the latest streams of thought in theology (and even science) are saying. Members who have moved beyond the early stage become disheartened-even outright angry-when they sense they are being patronized and not respected. Rather than speaking up and trying to rectify a situation they believe to be beyond their power to influence-after all, the clergy seems unwilling to address their concerns-they simply disappear. This book is a call to what the author calls "progressive Christianity" in which the clergy and the laity both seek to live faithfully in the modern world, not by denying that world, but by learning from it and interpreting the faith in its light. This book is not for those who yearn for that "old time religion" but for those who honestly seek to understand the world in which they live. I would recommend that every minister, denominational official, seminary professor, and layperson who wants to see Christianity continue into the future in a vibrant, meaningful way and not wither into irrelevance read this book. They should not read it if they want to remain comfortable.

When I was a youngster Jack Good was the inspiration behind 50's TV pop music programmes like 'Six Five Special' and 'O Boy!', then essential teenage viewing on flickering black and white TV screens. I was growing up in a church oriented family under a Congregational minister Dad and the surrounding traditional Christianity ethos was absorbed almost unconsciously into my developing life, where it remained unchallenged for over 40 years. Then came Jack Spong, Richard Holloway & Co, and suddenly Christianity woke me up. On a recent visit to The Centre for Progressive Christianity at www.tcpc.org I discovered a flier for 'The Dishonest Church' by Jack Good, who subsequently has proved to be as compelling for me as his 50's namesake, though for rather different reasons! While many of the proliferating books on progressive Christianity refer to the difference between what most clergy learn through their training and what they communicate to their congregations, the 'church of the gaps' (to misquote Charles Coulson) has not had a book to itself, until now. The author has been an ordained pastor of the United Church of Christ for over 40 years, principally at churches in New York and Illinois. His book was prompted by a combination of concern for the fate of the Christian church and anger at the "..wide gap between the faith of the religious professionals and the faith of those who look to those professionals for leadership." So much pulpit power is expended to reinforce stale dogma that Christianity is seldom seen as an arena for thoughtful creativity and a search for truths that can never be fully possessed. The result is usually stale, boring churches where the superficial intimacy between pulpit and pew is in reality a yawning chasm, in both senses. How this situation breeds anxiety and suspicion is dramatically illustrated in the first chapter where an incident is related from an interview between a friend of the author's and the members of a prospective new pastorate. A rather hostile, conservative member asked if the applicant believed in a literal virgin birth, to which the pastor replied that his views on that matter were the same as St Paul. The member nodded approvingly and the interview moved on. The members of that church being ignorant of the fact that Paul never mentioned the birth of Christ may have handed a private 'victory' to the pastor, but demonstrates the tragic ignorance, fear and distrust that threaten the survival of the Christian church. There are some good descriptive phrases that were new to me. People whose faith sees God in control with ultimate justice prevailing are described as "chaos intolerant" while those who can encompass the reality of cosmic messiness are "chaos tolerant". Both approaches are evident in the writings of the various biblical authors. While there is plenty of justified criticism of church leadership here, there is much hope also. Reasons for the author's optimism include his belie