FOR CHRIST’S SAKE! Will Churches Stop and Think?
We face several world crises that could kill us all and end the human story. We also endure the immediate rise of a fascistic religious nationalism spearheaded by Donald Trump, which wants to destroy our American democracy. We members of Progressive Christianity recognize and lament these crises. But we are not geared to help resolve them. And many church and nonchurch people find themselves anxious, afraid, immobilized, depressed, unfit to help protect our irreplaceable world, and lost in denial.
As supposed lights in this dark world, churches are not set up to impact the crises we face. We all know they offer places where people can gather to sing, pray, and listen to sermons every Sunday. But while many secular groups are working hard to help resolve these crises, churches are doing nothing. And they are dying.
As members of Progressive Christianity, we care about the witness of Christianity in today’s world. While I identify with our organization’s concerns, like churches we do not go nearly far enough to be real and effective. In my 2022 book The Self-Destruction of America’s Churches (SDAC), to which this book is somewhat of a sequel, I did not go far enough. I wrote about several ways churches think, speak, and act and must stop if they want to live and thrive. But I left so very much unsaid. Most importantly, I failed to offer a viable alternative to church for an intensive life of action rooted in Jesus’ grace and truth.
In this book, I go much further in addressing these deep concerns.
In Part One, I strike a harder blow to the two cracked and crumbling foundation stones of churches: worship of the biblical God and the Bible itself, a loud echo of my previous book. We can value certain biblical insights and learn from the medieval past, but we cannot live there and make a difference in today’s world.
In Part Two, I take pains to expose five archaic, dehumanizing perspectives and prominent practices of churches that every Sunday hide in plain sight. I contend they violate Jesus’ gospel message, drive away thoughtful, educated people, and are killing churches right and left. Churches, of course, will not stop doing them.
In Part Three, for those smitten by the Hebrew prophets and Jesus’ call to active Love but who have not found or created a supportive and transforming company within which they can combat the powers that cause the crises threatening us, I offer an intense, new/old form of authentic community geared to help you join with others to…to save our irreplaceable world.
This form, a far cry from what we have known as church or normal clergy groups, I call Agapeic Beloved Communities (ABCs). Unlike the Beloved Communities we know that were started by people who have been persecuted, the privileged will create ABCs. They will commit not to some doctrinal prescription or denominational allegiance but to the powers of Jesus’ Love and important scientific truths that define us and our universe. They will recognize our deeply troubling times and live every day together, tightly bound to act for Christ’s sake.
In Part Three, I will challenge you, as a former or current pastor or theologian or a concerned layperson, to help form an ABC in your area.
If this book interests you, you may order it here at a discount price of $10.00 until April 15 (Income tax day). After that, the price will be $16.00.
If you read this book and find it important, please recommend it to others, especially those you think may have the guts to help you or others create an ABC (you can recommend it to everyone on your email list). If you are on social media, you can reach even more people. If you participate in a podcast or other forms of social communication, I would love to have you call attention to the book in those venues.
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In 2000, Time Warner published the paperback version of Duke Robinson’s award-winning hardcover book GOOD INTENTIONS under the title TOO NICE FOR YOUR OWN GOOD: How to Stop Making 9 Self-Sabotaging Mistakes. It appeared in 13 languages and as an early Kindle book. It continues to sell briskly.
His second non-fiction book, CREATE YOUR BEST LIFE: How to Live Fully Knowing One Day You Will Die, appeared in December 2011, published through CreateSpace. In this book, he writes intimately of the dying of his wife of 54 years, Barbara, in 2008, and of his almost dying in 2009.
In September 2012, also through CreateSpace, he published his first novel, SAVIOR: An Old Notion in a New Novel of Unthinkable Absurdity.
Robinson grew up in the Philadelphia area, graduating in 1950 from Haverford High School. He holds a BA degree in philosophy (1954) from the Wheaton College near Chicago, a Masters of Divinity degree (1958), from Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and an earned doctorate from San Francisco Theological Seminary (1979). He has lived since 1960, in the East Bay of Northern California.
For 28 years before retiring in 1996, he led the dynamic Montclair Presbyterian Church in Oakland, CA. During that ministry, for several years he was an adjunct professor at San Francisco Theological Seminary. He also was known widely as a speaker and appeared frequently on Northern California television.
Since 2000, he has lived in Rossmoor, an active retirement community in Walnut Creek, CA, about 15 miles east of Oakland. He has four adult children, nine wonderful grandchildren and four super-great, greatgrandchildren.
His book, A MIDDLE WAY: The Secular/Spiritual Road to Wholeness, published by Big Hat Press, May 2014, won the Honorable Mention Award in the Writers Digest nonfiction contest for that year.
In November 2015, Big Hat Press, published his memoir, STANDING ON MY HEAD … With My Fly Open. Robinson stood on his head when he was eight. In January 2024, Duke hit ninety-one, standing on his feet.
His sixth book, THE SELF-DESTRUCTION OF AMERICA’S CHURCHES, was published in late December 2020 by Big Hat Press.