A Christianity Worth Believing: Hope-Filled, Open-Armed, Alive-and-Well Faith for the Left out, Left behind, and Let Down in Us All

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Doug Pagitt

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Overview

Praise for A Christianity Worth Believing

"If you are drawn to the mystifying, loving God whom we meet in Jesus Christ, but put off by? 'Christianity,' this contrarian, wise, winsome, passionate book is a must-read."
—Lauren F. Winner, author, Girl Meets God; assistant professor, Duke Divinity School

"Envisioning and articulating fresh ways of holding and living Christian faith, Pagitt's book reads like an old-fashioned testimony, but it opens up important new possibilities and serves as a window into the soul of a new generation of Christians."
—Brian McLaren, networker; speaker; author, A New Kind of Christian, A Generous Orthodoxy, and Everything Must Change

"With honesty, humor, and insight, Doug Pagitt offers us a beautiful, holistic, compelling vision of the Kingdom of God. If you're one of the ever-increasing multitude who sense something is profoundly 'off' with traditional Christianity, this book is a must read!"
—Gregory A. Boyd, author, Myth of a Christian Nation

"This is Doug Pagitt's raw, honest, fear-and-trembling faith workout. Thanks, Doug."
—Shane Claiborne, activist, author, and recovering sinner

"I am certain that this book will resonate with the many who have always felt there must be more to this faith life that we've chosen. Doug has created a treatise on Kingdom living in the here and now that you just will not want to miss."
—Jim Watters, former vice president of support ministries, World Relief; currently director of development, Pastor's Retreat Network

"Here is theology as it is supposed to be: a love story between two parts of one whole. Intimate, candid, vulnerable as well as brilliant and salvific, this one is God-talk at its most persuasive. It is also emergence Christianity at its clearest and best."
—Phyllis Tickle, founding editor, Religion Department of Publishers Weekly; author, The Words of Jesus

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Pagitt, a leader in the Emergent church movement, came to faith as a teenager at a Passion play, but Christian theology often didn't cohere with his own raw, powerful and inclusive experiences of and intuition about God. Here Pagitt tells his own story and weaves together a new theology for the Emergent movement, viewing Christian doctrine from a slightly different perspective and trying to break it out of the firm grasp of Greek thinking by returning it to its Jewish context, the way it would have been understood by first-century readers. To Pagitt, humanity's fallen state as a result of sin should not be emphasized so much as God's desire to partner with people to do good work in the world. The Bible is not so much about truth and error as it is a picture of God attempting to reconnect, while Jesus represents our potential to live in love and establish the kingdom of God now. Pagitt clearly articulates both the heart and theology of the Emergent movement. Conservative critics will no doubt consider this Christianity subtly twisted out of recognition, but postmodern readers struggling with current expressions of faith will see love and hope.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Library Journal

Author Pagitt is pastor of Solomon's Porch, a Minneapolis-based community church. In this book of contemporary spirituality, he writes of a more user-friendly, palatable, affirming, marketable, and sustainable variation on traditional Christian theology, using anecdotes to illustrate his points and essentially reducing complex theological issues to digestible faith-based lifestyles. Pagitt seems obsessed with marketing concepts, and he aims his book at the popular emerging community church movement, currently in serious competition with traditional denominational Christianity of the old-line Protestant style, many of whose adherents are growing distressed with the quality of spiritual life in traditional churches. Pagitt's book is certain to appeal to these disposed churchgoers, especially the YA members, because it offers a positive and uncontroversial alternative to the rigors of orthodoxy and its emphasis on human sin and depravity. Confessional theology of the fundamentalist variety seems to be confined today to a very vocal but restricted-and dying-minority. Pagitt's theology, while hardly new or innovative, may very well be the wave of the future. Recommended for libraries with large collections in spirituality.
—James A. Overbeck

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780470455340
Publisher: Wiley, John & Sons, Incorporated
Publication date: 4/20/2009
Edition number: 1
Pages: 256
Sales rank: 835,450
Product dimensions: 5.50 (w) x 8.70 (h) x 0.90 (d)

Meet the Author

Doug Pagitt is the pastor of Solomon's Porch, a holistic, missional Christian community in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He has written a number of books, has worked in churches, for a non-profit foundation, and owns two businesses in Minneapolis. Doug is a sought-after speaker for churches, denominations, and businesses throughout the United States and around the world on issues of culture and Christianity.

A Living Way: Emergent Visions Series Foreword     vii
Preface     xi
Confessions of an Adopted Son     1
Passion Play     11
From Amen to Uh-Oh     18
The Wild Goose Chase     28
When Different Was Good     37
It's in the Way That You Use It     51
Strange Medicine     68
Together, Again     80
Up and Out     94
Down and In     105
Wonderfully Made     116
Same as It Ever Was     131
There Goes the Judge     145
Behind Blue Eyes     161
The Jew I Never Knew     171
You Say You Want a Revolution     183
I Didn't Know Him from Adam     196
Heaven on Earth     213
Notes     235
Acknowledgments     239
The Author     241

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Tom_B

Posted January 19, 2010

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This book truly is "a hope-filled pursuit toward an alive and well faith for our day."

Doug Pagit writes "My hope is that this book is my invitation for people to pursue a Christianity that is good for world, good for their spirits and good for their faith."

Doug's latest work is by far his best. It is simple and accessible because it reads like an old-school testimony, but it accomplishes this without sacrificing any of the depth needed to address the issues Doug sets out to cover.

Doug invites readers to follow along as he recounts his own faith journey of growing up as an un-churched child and then becoming a Christian while experiencing a Passion play as a teenager. Doug details how he was immediately immersed in the Christian culture and was quickly leading Bible studies and even involved in court cases for Christian rights.

Doug explains that he is a contrarian (a person who questions any majority opinion) by nature. And how this led him to question and explore the roots of the theology and doctrines of the modern western church culture.

For longer than I care to admit, I naively assumed that the popular theology and widely accepted doctrines of the church were well, unchanging biblical truths. I simply took it for granted that were the apostle Paul to show up at my door he would recognize and affirm all of the theology and doctrine I was taught. But the truth is our Christianity has been passed down through a great many generations and our doctrines have been shaped and reshaped by many folks who were simply trying to make sense of things in their time. The danger here is that we have come to view these doctrines as set in stone and allowed them to become stagnate.

Doug presents a unique critique of western Christianity. Unique in the fact that it is not meant to be an argument about who is more "correct" in their theology. Doug shows how Greek philosophy, mid-evil superstition, and modern reasoning have permeated into the story of Jesus and left their mark on our own theology and doctrines. Such as the idea that Greeks, who worshiped vengeful impersonal gods, did not have any frame of reference or understanding of an intimate or personal God such as Yahweh. He walks through the ideas that developed through the centuries to explain Jesus and the Kingdom of God and how they have shaped our own theology.

This book offers us all a beautiful, holistic, compelling vision of the Kingdom of God. One that will resonate with many people who have always felt there must be more to Jesus and the kingdom of God than what you were taught on the flannel-graph. If you are drawn to, mystified, or even intrigued by Jesus, but put off by the religion that bears his name then this book is exactly what you need. It truly is "a hope-filled pursuit toward an alive and well faith for our day."

"I want it to be an invitation to a Christianity that makes sense in the world we live in." - Doug Pagitt

You can give this book seminary trained pastors as well as people who can not name a single book of the Bible and they will both enjoy its depth and simplicity.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Anonymous

Posted June 8, 2008

A reviewer

I may have just given Doug Pagitt the title for his next book, but it aptly describes my response to his new book - A Christianity Worth Believing. I read the first three chapters on his website 'dougpagitt.com' and couldn't wait for its release. Since picking up a copy 'hot off the presses,' I only put the book down to eat, sleep, and conduct other necessary functions -' This book will be a gift of affirmation for those who aren't afraid to ask questions and question the answers. For those who have often felt like a 'fish out of water' in Sunday school, small groups, Bible school and seminary, Pagitt invites you into a theological conversation. He masterfully and winsomely weaves together his own life story with insights drawn from church history, theology, cultural anthropology, missiology, and scripture. Simply put, Pagitt writes an eloquent narrative theology for a 'post-systematic' generation... and in doing so he causes you to pause, think, and wrestle with your faith. As a professor of intercultural and biblical studies, I am impressed with the depth of Pagitt's theological, historical, and cultural knowledge, and his unique gift to write about such topics in way that engages and is accessible to readers. He shows how so much of our 'Christian' language and understanding of what it means to be Christian has been shaped by cultural contexts and worldviews very different than ours today... and very different than those of the biblical writers. In peeling back the cultural layers that clothe so much of Western Christianity, he reveals a faith that is dynamic, conversational, invitational, relevant, relational, wholistic, and alive. This is what I try to help my students discover faith in a God fully engaged in our world and inviting us to join in God's adventure - today. Get some friends together, grab your pens, take notes, and enter into a conversation that will help you discover a Christianity worth believing... and living.

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A Christianity Worth Believing: Hope-Filled, Open-Armed, Alive-and-Well Faith for the Left out, Left behind, and Let Down in Us All

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This book truly is "a hope-filled pursuit toward an alive and well faith for our day."

A reviewer