Still Christian by David P. Gushee was an interesting read. Reading his story of faith in the Southern Baptist world he inhabited was put a lot of current events into perspective. I appreciated that he was honest about his struggles and honest the things he learned. What I appreciated the most was that despite what happened and despite whether or not he agreed or others agreed with him, that did not diminish his faith. The last section of the book as he's explaining the things he still believes and the creeds by which he lives was powerful. I felt that was a really solid way to end the book and end his journey.
Overall, this was an interesting read. I come from the Baptist tradition but not Southern Baptist. So understanding the different culture of that area was fascinating.
There were a few moments where the history lesson of what happened in the church got a little dry but overall, it was a good read.

An excellent autobiographical account from a Baptist academic who has been on the front line of the culture war for the last 35 years. Southern Baptists have been at war since 1979 when the fundamentalists began their takeover of the largest Baptist denomination of the world. I was an undergraduate religion major at Baylor when this started. Instead of continuing to Southern Seminary, I withdrew from the battle and went to law school.
David Gushee chose to stay and fight. He became the premier expert on ethics in Baptist academia. He returned to Southern Seminary as a professor and almost gave in to the allure of a tenured position in a large seminary. Thankfully, he refused to compromise his principals and spoke out on issues like torture. He has since broken ties with the right wing of the Southern Baptists, but still writes and teaches at Mercer.
This is a very personal and well written treatise. I enjoyed it as much as any book that I have read in the last few years. Highly recommended.

A thought provoking book that tells the story of a former evangelical who "sees the light." As I read David Gushee's story, I saw parts of my own story. I could relate to his frustration with women not being allowed to hold positions of Christian leadership just because they were women. In my experience, I have known several women who seemed fitter and more called to ministry than some men who claimed a call to ministry. I also saw myself in his increasing compassion for LGBTQ people created in the image of God. One helpful distinction for me was accepting people as they are rather than as our religious constructs say they are. Mr. Gushee's precise questions throughout the book, helped me clarify my own thinking. I would highly recommend this book for anyone seeking to understand more about the dark side of the evangelical movement and how there is hope for those of us who have seen the light and left the darkness.

David Gushee has been through the gamut of the Christian culture wars. As pastor, professor, activist, writer, and high-profile spokesman for evangelicalism, he has seen the Christian right, the Christian left, and plenty of not-so-Christian Christians. In Still Christian: Following Jesus Out of American Evangelicalism he tells his own story as it intertwines with political and religious life in the United States.


I especially enjoyed Still Christian because I feel like a fellow traveler with Gushee. He attended Southern Seminary, then went to Union Seminary in New York for his Ph.D. Returning to Southern Seminary to teach, he was struck by the change in culture due to the conservative takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention. He stayed at Southern for several years, but left when his more liberal positions were less and less welcome. I am a few years younger than Gushee, but experienced the same sorts of changes. When I was at Baylor, the historic Baptist university began the process of becoming self-governing to protect itself from the hard-line conservatism. The semester I graduated from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, the conservative faction successfully drove the president away. Much of the theology faculty followed shortly after--as soon as they found positions elsewhere.


Like Gushee, my faith in Jesus was not shaken, but my faith practice was impacted deeply, and my faith in other Christians was diminished. He writes, "I haven't been able to stop being a Christian. Despite all the fighting, culture warring, and general craziness that I've seen, I am still doing my best to be a follower of Jesus." While my wanderings have been personal and unknown to the public, Gushee's struggles have been linked to his career, including his high-profile written work. He's had to face the choice between following his conscience and providing for his family. Thankfully, for him, things have worked out professionally, but not often without stress and difficulty.


Gushee is quite vulnerable and personal in his memoir. Part of his testimony is that he found himself too intellectual and thoughtful for typical Baptist life. Of course, he doesn't put it like that. But the tone of Still Christian is largely intellectually arrogance. He leaves the reader with the impression that if Christians were only more intellectual, well-read, educated, smarter, and more thoughtful, they would flee from the fundamentalist, narrow beliefs of their historic faith. I don't sense in Gushee's attitude, or in the attitudes of others on the evangelical left, an openness to the idea that Christians with traditionally conservative theological perspectives (or conservative political convictions, for that matter) came to their conclusions due to thoughtful consideration, deep study of the scripture, and prayerful conviction. I got the sense that Gushee holds people who share his theological and ethical stances in high esteem, while people to his left are worthy of his consideration, but people to his right are clearly lesser lights.


For instance, he writes that "the resurgence of a doctrinaire Calvinism in contemporary evangelicalism is among the most odious developments of the last generation. I abhor its version of God and most of its version of Christian ethics." He can't just disagree; it's a stain on the church. Similarly, one of the main points of division in Baptist life is the role of women, specifically the question of whether a woman can be a senior pastor. The conservatives at Southern Seminary made this question the line of demarcation; anyone who believed women could be pastors was shown the door. I get the sense that Gushee would be just as exclusive--anyone who does not believe women can be pastors would be shown the door. How about each individual church decides who can be their pastor?


The final and most contentious cause of Gushee's separation from evangelism was his outspoken advocacy for gay Christians. It amazes me that in a very few short years the belief that homosexual activity is sinful has come to be so controversial. I do not doubt that there are many gay Christians. I also do not doubt that gay sex is sinful, as is any other sex outside of the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman. The church's treatment of gays and the singling out of homosexual sex as especially sinful has been terrible, historically, and a corrective is welcome. But to swing all the way to saying gay sex is part of God's wonderful plan is to jettison scripture, church history, and sociological experience all at once.


I respect Gushee's work and his convictions on several points, even as I disagree with him sometimes. But his journey exemplifies the tendency of liberal Christianity. The drift to the left keeps on drifting and the farther it drifts, the harder it is to stop. While I was on the "anti-fundamentalist" side of the "Battle for the SBC," the controversy drove me away from Baptist life. I go to a non-denominational church now, but many of my college and seminary cohort are in Cooperative Baptist Fellowship churches, which, as Gushee points out, no longer means SBC-style churches who might allow women to serve in church leadership. The CBF has become "an uneasy coalition of moderates . . . and real-life liberals." If they are not already there, they are moving rapidly toward the universalism and moral relativism that mark many mainline churches.


Gushee is still a Christian. I have no qualms calling him a brother in Christ. I know I could learn much from his devotional and reflective life. But Still Christian left me wondering, how far can Gushee go? How far from historic theological and ethical principles can he wander and still consider himself a Christian? Unfortunately, the sense I get from Still Christian is this: Look to your right and to your left. People to your right are unenlightened; pray that they will grow. People on your left are further along in their journey; follow them. I think I would like David Gushee. But I won't be following him leftward.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!

So here's the deal. This book falls into a very peculiar niche. To pick it up, you'd have to possess at least SOME prior knowledge of who Gushee is to even be interested. There are enough memoirs and blog posts and Facebook statuses about departures from mainline evangelicalism to fill your time. This one is hardly needed. A lot of these types of books seem to take a tone of "It's okay, we're all okay, I'm fine, you're fine, we're going to make it" that they get tiresome to peruse, let alone take the time to read in their entirety. If you're a fan of Rachel Held Evans (or her ilk, and Lord help you if you are), then this might be right up your alley. It will confirm your biases and give you a nice pat on the back. It will also take the absolutely baffling stance of "We can't possibly know what's right, but we definitely know that [conservative mainline evangelicalism] is wicked and wrong for these overblown and thoroughly refuted reasons" if that's something you keep in your wheelhouse and want reinforced. For the rest of us, give it a hard pass.

There have been very few times in my faith walk when I've read a novel by a fellow Christian and felt like, finally, I'm not alone. David P. Gushee's Still Christian: Following Jesus out of American Evangelicalism is one of them. I devoured Still Christian in one giant gulp like I was starving, and honestly, I think in the current culture wars of white evangelicalism, I have been.

Still Christian is a walk through Gushee's personal conversion experience at a Southern Baptist Church when he was 17 all the way through his professorial and Christian ethics career. He discusses his perspectives of the major changes in christian conservative culture in a manner that was humble, honest, and painful to read at times. Yet, I closed the book with hope.

Christianity is messy. It has always been messy. But the truth of Christ's redemption is simple. Profoundly simple. I'm encouraged by the reminder that despite how discouraged I am by the church, I'm still christian too.

David Gushee does not hold back in this personal memoir and a critique of American Evangelicalism and some of its more prominent institutions and people. While his criticism is quite scathing at times, it is never ad hominem and wherever possible, also narrates positives with each experience, whether institution or with a person.

Gushee joins the Southern Baptist Convention during its period of a major split between moderates and conservatives/fundamentalists beginning in the late 1970's. And for nearly three decades he is a part of that world. As his personal trajectory diverges away from the SBC, he eventually finds himself in a more moderate/progressive Baptist world.

Having lived on both sides of the evangelical divide in prominent roles, he is uniquely positioned to discuss the virtues and vices found on either side. But it shouldn't be surprising that he finds American Evangelicalism, as a religious system and identity, some of its doctrines, and its system of thought to be on the whole, wanting. While not explicitly calling out some of its features evil, he comes very close. And that is saying quite something considering it is coming from someone holding a Ph.D. in ethics.

Maybe the average member of a SBC-affiliated congregation could care less about the recent history and controversies in the denomination. But perhaps they should. And maybe understand that the denomination was hijacked by a small group of fundamentalists who have steered it ever rightward and further into extremism.

Gushee also applies many of the controversies, shifts, and problems he experienced and saw in the SBC and Evangelicalism to the greater American political contour. He sees a direct line tying the two parts. Certain kinds of identity politics lead to religious fundamentalism and extremism in a church, while the exact same politics lead to political extremism in government.

I don't think Gushee is being too harsh. I believe he is being very direct and honest in his assessment of American Evangelicalism in general, and in many cases, the SBC. While no system is perfect, some are worse than others, and Gushee minces no words in being a prophetic voice in calling out a large part of the American religious landscape as heading in a very wrong direction, even an anti-Christian one (my interpretation).

As for the book itself, it is very well written and moves along. I didn't expect it to be quite so engaging for a religious/theological memoir, but once I started it, I could not put it down.

(Review based on ARC supplied by the publisher through NetGalley.)

A fascinating, and intimate story of a life within evangelical Christianity, and how one can grow and move while still holding onto the things that really matter. Delightfully readable, but also deeply thought provoking and relevant, this story demonstrates that you can question, and you can change, while still remaining a follower of Jesus.