One Priest's Wondering Beliefs [Hardcover]

This book is aimed at those Christians who have begun to question the conventional understandings of Jesus, and Christianity, and even of what we mean by God, and have become discomforted by the dissonance between their own thinking and the church's stance. A critical thinker by inclination and education, Jack Bowers explored Celtic Christian spirituality for a decade. That taught him there are other ways to live out the Christian faith than what we have been told by Rome and Protestantism. Upon retirement in 1998, no longer professionally required to reflect conventional theology, his belief structure began to wander, seriously re-examining all he had taught and believed. Having heard whispered rumors in younger years of priests losing their faith, instead he felt he was not losing his theology but growing it. This volume leads you through the evolution of his beliefs to what he can speak out with confidence right now, understanding that as he continues to grow and experience this world, and hopefully get a little wiser, his beliefs will evolve yet farther. He invites you into this challenging spiritual pilgrimage to discover what you can confidently believe in 2016 AD. Jack Bowers is an important voice for those of us who have outgrown our childhood faith in God as an old man in the sky dispensing favors like Santa Claus.He speaks to, and for, Progressive Christians who no longer want or need rules, rubric, confessions, and creeds in order to worship, but have matured to redefine what faith/religion means to us now. --Diane H. Berger, United Church of Christ This book offers a stringent guide to anyone seriously exploring the possibilities of a post-Christian, faithful world. Written in a spirit of acute honesty, it gives the reader a step-by-step intellectual adventure in which reader and author work toward a hard-won, hopeful vision of redemptive human possibility. --Barry L. Cotter, Episcopal priest, retired Bowers' book critically questions, lC–