Synopses & Reviews
During his thirty-year career as a parish minister and professor, Robin Meyers has focused on renewing the church as an instrument of social change and personal transformation. In this provocative and passionate book, he explores the decline of the church as a community of believers and calls readers back to the church’s roots as a community of resistance. Shifting the conversation about church renewal away from theological purity and marketing strategies that embrace cultural norms, and toward “embodied noncompliance” with the dominant culture, Meyers urges a return to the revolutionary spirit that marked Jesus’s ministry.
Framing his discussion around three poems by twentieth-century Polish poet Anna Kamienska, Meyers casts the nature of faith as a force that stands against anything and everything that engenders death and indignity. He calls for active—sometimes even subversive—defiance of the ego’s temptations, of what he terms “the heresy of orthodoxy itself,” and of an uncritical acceptance of militarism and capitalism. Each chapter is a poignant and urgent invitation to recover the Jesus Movement as a Beloved Community of Resistance.
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“A perceptive book . . . Not many authors can present such progressive ideas and still come across as reasonable and loving. Meyers masters such a task.” Oklahoma City Oklahoman
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“Robin Meyers emerges in Saving Jesus from the Church as a national voice for a new Christianity. He is a well read scholar and a superb communicator. He writes with a refreshing honesty and a disarming authority. This book is a treat.” John Shelby Spong, author of Jesus for the Non-Religious
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“With crisply prophetic joy, Meyers calls seekers and believers alike to leave belief about God behind in favor of becoming imitators of Jesus. We can save Jesus from the church, and in doing so, recreate faith communities freed from hypocrisy and filled with hope.” Diana Butler Bass, author of Christianity for the Rest of Us
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“Every once in a while, a book comes along that changes everything. This is the book. It is scholarly, pastoral, prophetic, and eloquent--all in equal measure. Robin Meyers has spoken truth to power, and the church he loves will never be the same.” Desmond Tutu
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“The time is right for this book and this book is right for the time.” Fred B. Craddock, Bandy Distinguished Professor of Preaching and New Testament Emeritus, Emory University
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“In a progressive rather than negatively critical mode, in strong contrast to much of Far Right Protestantism, pastor/NPR commentator Meyers (philosophy, Oklahoma City Univ.) suggests with typical elegance that a recovery of true Christianity emphasizes compassion over condemnation, blessing over sin, and equity over individual prosperity. Highly recommended.” Library Journal, starred review
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“Meyers insightful and provocative critique of contemporary Christianity will stimulate energetic theologizing: deconstruction, reconstruction, or impassioned defense of the inherited tradition. Thank you, Robin, for convening this urgently needed conversation.” Dr. James A. Forbes, Jr., president and founder of The Healing of the Nations Foundation
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“Robin Myers is unsettling, disruptive, even subversive. I find myself imagining a loud buzzer sounding in every seminary classroom and from every pulpit in America: 'We interrupt this normally scheduled programming with a message from the Emergency Broadcast System. This is not a test; it is an actual emergency,' which is followed by a reading of this book."—Brian D. McLaren, author/speaker/activist
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“This is Robin Meyers at his pastoral and prophetic best. Read it, and then for the love of God--RESIST!”—Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu
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“A challenging and visionary manifesto. When this wind comes sweeping down the plain, it sounds a lot like the creative breath of a Genesis dawn and the fiery spirit of a Pentecost morning.”—John Dominic Crossan
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“Spiritual Defiance is a veritable landscape of dramatically beautiful phrases and insights, bon mots and felicitous subtleties. Meyers’s “Resistance To Orthodoxy” section is particularly brilliant, seeming almost to scintillate before the reader. It would be hard, in fact, to imagine a more informing and/or pleasurable treatment than this of clericalism in the contemporary world.”—Phyllis Tickle, author of
The Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and WhyReview
“Here is a book that could not be more timely, or more urgent. Robin Meyers has carefully and persuasively sketched out exactly what we most desperately need today to defeat the divisive forces that threaten to shred our communities. Fair and comprehensive, the book is also eloquently composed.”—Harvey Cox, author of
The Future of Faith Review
“Robin Meyers names the factors that are paralyzing the church and making it irrelevant. His witty discerning summons will ring true for many readers.”—Walter Brueggemann
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“This is an important and delightful book. Robin Meyers is a modern practitioner of the traditional clergy/scholar model of ministry: wise, learned, witty, but with passion for the church refined by his years of experience as a pastor. At a time when everyone is ready to give up on the institution, he eloquently provides a hopeful, helpful vision for the future. Anyone who cares about the future of the church and the world the church is called to serve, should read this book.”—John M. Buchanan, Publisher/Editor of the Christian Century
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“While many are scrambling to find nifty fixes for all that ails the uninspired and uninspiring institutional church, Robin Meyers is looking instead to God’s holy fools, for passionate Don Quixotes of non-compliance, who are as resistant to scriptural and cultural rigidity as they are subversive for the cause of love. Rather than a Christianity that peddles implausible doctrines, Spiritual Defiance calls for a Jesus Ethic that lets go of ‘being right’ and gets on with the more distinguishing work of challenging empires and changing the world.”—The Rev. Dr. J. Bennett Guess, Executive Minister and National Officer, United Church of Christ
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“[An] explosive call to religious progressives to resist cultural and economic injustice. . . . Knowledgeable, engaging, and provocative.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Synopsis
From One of America's Leading Pastors, a Bold Call to Restore Christianity's True Mission: Following Jesus
The marriage of bad theology and hypocritical behavior by the church has eroded our spiritual lives. Taking the best of biblical scholarship, Meyers recasts core Christian concepts in an effort to save Christianity from its obsession with personal salvation. Not a plea to try something brand new, but rather the recovery of something very old, Saving Jesus from the Church shows us what it means to follow Jesus's teachings today.
Synopsis
Many Christians today are concerned by what they see as a combination of bad theology and bad behavior on the part of the Church. They seek another answer to their spiritual questions, but that answer might just be ... Christianity, albeit a Christianity with a new approach.
Pastor and author Robin Meyers argues that important doctrinal points must be rethought in more modern terms. According to Meyers, Christians needs to see Jesus as a teacher, not a savior. Prosperity is a dangerous condition, not a divine one. And Christianity itself has to do more with compassion than condemnation. Saving Jesus from the Church shows us what it means to be a Christian in the twenty-first century.
Robin Meyers, Ph.D., is the senior minister at Mayflower Congregational UCC Church in Oklahoma City and professor of rhetoric in the Philosophy Department at Oklahoma City University. He is a syndicated columnist and award-winning commentator for National Public Radio. He was featured in the HBO documentary, "The Execution of Wanda Jean," for his efforts to save the life of the first woman to be executed in Oklahoma. Meyers writes regularly for The Christian Century and is the author of four books. He and his wife, Shawn, have three children. They live in Oklahoma City.
"Every once in a while, a book comes along that changes everything. This is the book. It is scholarly, pastoral, prophetic, and eloquent - all in equal measure. The invitation to follow Jesus instead of worshiping Christ could not come at a more important time, or be issued by a more credible source. Robin Meyers has spoken truth to power, and the church he loves will never be the same."
- Desmond Tutu
--Dr. James A. Forbes, Jr., president and founder of The Healing of the Nations Foundation
Synopsis
A leading voice of progressive Christianity makes a powerful case for faith as a radical way of being in the world
About the Author
For over twenty years, Robin Meyers has been pastor of Mayflower Congregational, an "unapologetically Christian, unapologetically liberal" church. He is a professor in the philosophy department at Oklahoma City University, a syndicated columnist, and an award-winning commentator for National Public Radio. Meyers has appeared on Dateline NBC, the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, and ABC World News, and writes regularly for The Christian Century.