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Review: Stories of a Recovering Fundamentalist: Understanding and Responding to Christian Absolutism
- By Gary Dale Cearley
- Published March 3, 2009
- Religion and Spirituality
Gary Dale Cearley
Reviewer Gary Dale Cearley is an expatriate American who chooses to write about controversial material. His subject matter tends to run the gamut from historical subjects to biography and even humor. Originally from Arkansas, he has spent several years in Korea as well as Vietnam and is now living in Thailand.Â
View all articles by Gary Dale Cearley
Author: James C. Alexander
ISBN-10: 1434381323
ISBN-13: 978-1434381323
I was one of those who grew up in a fundamentalist
church (Churches of Christ) and have questioned basically everything
in my life since then.
James Alexander, who I must say writes in a very intelligent style, recounts his own life’s and to an extent his wife’s struggles of the heart, the intellect and ultimately the soul between what is right and wrong and what is true and not true. This book is a story of metamorphosis.
During the 1960’s the author was a member of the
Jesus Freak movement and later did lots of searching for churches
that “felt right” to him and his wife. Always seeking a
higher understanding James Alexander studied hard and even went to a
seminary, oddly enough a Catholic one, and became a minister in
Middle America. Through the years though the doubts kept coming
up – he was seeing that to buy into absolutism in Christianity was
to buy into an investment that wasn’t making much sense to him
anymore. James Alexander was beginning to see that many of the
stories of the Bible were just that, stories. He came to see
many of the myths in the stories of miracles and impossible events
recorded in the Bible. But this did not bring him to a
rejection of his Christianity, but rather to see that these myths
were necessary. We learned powerful lessons of morality through
these myths. These myths in many ways were the basis of many
cultures. They taught us to love one another and they taught of
the love of God. The author found himself in stark contrast to
the religion that he had been following for so many years.
Finally, and not with grand fanfare, he and his wife made the move.
They simply moved to another church.
James Alexander is in no way damning of the fundamentalists who he knew and communed with for so long. In fact he not only tells of his strong ties to the many brethren he’d come to accept as Christian brothers and sisters but he admits that giving up absolutist ideology has not been without doubts and withdrawals. This is a strong statement for the author to make in my opinion as although it can be argued that doubts and withdrawals are a sign of an unclean conscious I would be the first to disagree: It is totally consistent with the main statement of the book – that there is nothing absolute in the religion, only people who see things from an absolutist standpoint. And even though I might not agree with his every position, James Alexander has given the reader a raw, loving and completely honest testimony of his own journey of faith.