Reflecting on The Future of Faith
“Where do you find yourself is this story?” is a frequent question posed to twenty-first century Christians grappling with sacred texts in mid-week and Sunday morning Bible studies across denominations. Less frequent are church study groups that ask the same question of a contemporary text like Harvey Cox’s The Future of Faith, a provocative depiction of what Christianity could be becoming right now.
As I read Cox’s latest book I found myself persuaded that indeed Christianity could be making, as Cox proposes, “its most momentous transformation since its transition in the fourth century CE” from “a tiny Jewish sect into the religious ideology of the Roman Empire” (p.2). The most convincing part of Cox’s thesis is his two-part case that...
“Resurrection isn’t easy,” says Noele Farrell, the teenage heroine of
Andrew Greeley’s novel Lord of the Dance. Rev. Dr. Mary Louise Gifford,
pastor of Wollaston Congregational Church (UCC) in Quincy, MA, can cite
chapter and verse why this is so. In her book, The
Turnaround Church: Inspiration and Tools for Life-Sustaining Change
Judy
Cannato’s book 
of
the above title 
“Guess what, Neil?”
“What, Dad?”
“You’re a Kohen?”
“A what, Dad?”
“A Kohen, Neil.”
“Oh, I’m a Kohen…what does that mean, Dad?”
“It means that you, just like me and your grandfather and his father before him and his father before him and…well, you know what I mean, are a descendant of Aaron, the High Priest, Moses’ brother. Our ancestors used to be the spiritual leaders of the Israelites back in the desert as the people moved toward the Land of Israel and then in the Holy Temple in Jerusalem.”
Truth be told, I don’t ever recall my father sitting down and having a conversation with me like the one I have just described. But we may have had it…
The following are portions from two chapters of This Odd and Wondrous Calling: The Public and Private Lives of Two Ministers, recently published by William B. Eerdmans Publishers. They are offered as perspectives on leadership—one at the beginning of ministry and another after years of accumulated experience in pastoral practice
My early teenage years, from about twelve to fifteen, were characterized by a growing dissatisfaction that cut deep into my being. Who was I? What was my place in this world? The caterpillar's ontological question to Alice, "Whooo are you?" just resonated to the edge of my skin. Walking down hallways, going to classes, even being with the people closest to me, did not answer these palpitating questions. I knew I was feeling tugged somewhere, but what does that tug look like for a fifteen-year-old female? How does one convince their parents of such a tugging? How does one even articulate such a tugging?
When I meet new people and tell them I’m a minister, they tend to assume I was called to ministry in a sort of reprise of St. Paul’s conversion. There must have been a light, a voice, a wounding, a healing, a calling—something dramatic. Why else would one hitch one’s fortune to an institution as retrograde and medieval as the church?
