Unbinding Christianity

THE BOOK: Unbinding Christianity: Choosing the Values of Jesus over the Beliefs of the Church.

PUBLISHED IN: 2020.

THE AUTHOR: Jan G. Linn.

THE EDITOR: Jeff Young.

THE PUBLISHER: Universal Publishers.

SUMMARY: Unbinding Christianity is a book that will be good news for some readers while stretching  others in uncomfortable ways. It begins with the premise that traditional Christian teaching is focused on right beliefs while the life and teachings of Jesus was all about right living. The book represents a fresh voice for Christians who struggle to accept traditional beliefs by assuring them that Jesus himself said much more about right values than he did right beliefs.

The goal of this book is to unbind Christianity from the wrappings of creeds, doctrines, dogma, and beliefs in order to make room for an understanding of what it means to be Christian defined by values that invites unity among Christians without the need for conformity of beliefs. One of the important by-products of this values-based Christianity is that it paves the way for Christians with different beliefs to find common ground with one another while also freeing them to build bridges of understanding with non-Christians.

THE BACK STORY: I think I started writing this book the moment I realized I did not believe many of the things I was told to believe growing up in the church. The fact that I was studying for the ministry caused more than a little inward unrest about what the church said and what I believed. All these years later I see that the inward struggle I experienced was instrumental in finding my own way as a persons of faith. Living among other scholars as a college and seminary faculty member gave me both support and permission to think about matters of faith and morals. I wrote this book to assure people who are drawn to Christianity, but cannot accept much of what the church says that they need not hesitate to question traditional beliefs and teachings. The church has sought conformity of belief and in return has driven people away. My book seeks to make the case for a Christianity that is better than that, bigger than that, and more inclusive than that.

WHY THIS TITLE?: The book’s title is a single statement that summarizes the thesis of the book.

WHY WOULD SOMEONE WANT TO READ IT? Readers will discover a values based Christianity with which they resonate, but have not had words to express before now. For people who are not Christian, or not even religious, this book offers a view of Christianity that is open-minded, open-hearted, and open-ending, a faith that builds bridges between people rather than erecting barriers.

REVIEW COMMENTS:

“If you have found it impossible to continue believing in some of the doctrines the church has taught to be essential and don’t know if you can continue being a Christian, Jan Linn offers some much needed guidance. He invites readers to think along with him as he makes distinctions between believing in doctrines and having value-enlivened belief, between being a Christian and being Christian. His message is that just because your integrity demands you give up on some traditional Christian ideas doesn’t mean you need to become a Christian dropout.” — The Rev. Craig Watts, D.Min, author of Bowing Toward Babylon.

“Unbinding Christianity is a thought-provoking argument for expansion of Christianity’s often employed litmus tests of inclusion and rejection. Jan Linn addresses this complex issue in a clear, concise, and easily accessible manner. A great read!” — Joshua Santana, Attorney-at-Law.

“This book is a wake-up call to all of us who choose to follow Jesus, a challenge for us to rethink what it truly means to be Christian. Jan Linn’s thesis is simple, yet profound—it is what we do on a daily basis, not what we believe, that is the core of “a Christian life.”
—Heather Cargill, Psy.D., Licensed Clinical Psychologist.

AUTHOR PROFILE: Jan G. Linn has served as chaplain and a member of the teaching faculty at Lynchburg College in Virginia, and was Professor of the Practice of Ministry at Lexington Theological Seminary in Kentucky before giving up tenure to become co-pastor with his wife of a new church start in Minnesota. After fourteen years he retired to write fulltime. He is the author of eighteen books, and has a widely read blog, “Thinking Against The Grain,” at linnposts.com.

SAMPLE CHAPTER:

Why A Book Like This

I have written this book for anyone who is Christian, has been Christian, or for any number of reasons has an interest in Christianity. But it is written most especially for Christians who don’t believe everything the church has told them they should believe to be a Christian. My thesis is simple: You can be as Christian as anyone else without letting the church tell you what beliefs you must hold to qualify. I describe it as the difference between being Christian that is focused on living by the values Jesus lived and taught and being a Christian that is defined by “right” beliefs. This difference is about an understanding of Christianity that doesn’t dismiss Christian beliefs, but is free of the church wrapping Christianity into a small package of creeds, doctrines, dogma, and
right beliefs that has squeezed the life out of it for many people who cannot accept those beliefs as “gospel.”

The challenge as I see it is what I call the unbinding of Christianity that shifts its meaning from beliefs, creeds, and doctrines to the values Jesus actually talked about. There is a story in the gospel of John about a man named Lazarus who suddenly becomes ill and dies whose ending speaks directly to what I think Christianity desperately needs. Lazarus and his two sisters, Mary and Martha, lived in a small town called Bethany a couple of miles from Jerusalem. When their brother dies, Mary and Martha send word to Jesus of what has happened. Staying in the region around the Jordan River where he had been teaching, for some unknown reason Jesus delays going to Bethany four days. By the time he arrives Lazarus had already been wrapped in grave clothes and placed in a tomb similar to the one in which Jesus himself would be placed after his crucifixion. Eventually Jesus goes with Mary and Martha to the tomb where, the story says, Jesus broke down and wept. He then instructs some men to roll the stone from the grave’s entrance, after which he surprises the crowd by calling Lazarus to come out. To
everyone’s astonishment Lazarus appears at the tomb’s entrance. Jesus immediately says to those gathered, “Unbind him, and let him go” (John 11:1-44).

How ironic that all these centuries later the simple message of Jesus about how to be in the world without being of it needs to be set free of the wrappings of death much as Lazarus was. Not that the church’s statements of faith were intended to function as grave clothing, but I think that is precisely  what has happened. As a result, today’s Christianity is for all practical purposes a religion about Jesus while his own words about the values by which Christians can and should live have been pushed aside. What is more, the divisions that separate American Christians from one another today are largely rooted
in the fault lines of beliefs about Jesus, God, the Holy Spirit, the future of the world, and the like. It often seems as if the church is determined to argue and fight over beliefs about Jesus rather than focusing on equipping people to live their lives the way he lived his.

Adding to the problem is that over the centuries church hierarchy has become less tolerant of dissent and more determined to exercise its authority and power to force conformity of belief. If you grew up in the church you were probably taught traditional Christian beliefs such as Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary, was God in the flesh, died for the sins of the world, was raised from the dead, and will one day return to judge the living and the dead. It is possible your church allowed you to question these beliefs, but it is more likely that you were told to accept them at face value. You may still be in a church that is saying this, or you may have dropped out for that very reason. What I hope this book will show you is that there is an alternative to this kind of Christianity that focuses on values instead of beliefs. Before we get there, though, let’s put our discussion in some historical context.

In significant ways the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century was a successful challenge to a beliefs-based faith, but the diversity of beliefs it produced happened more unintentionally than intentionally, a by-product of freedom from church authority that had forced conformity of beliefs for centuries. While the door to theological diversity in today’s Catholic parishes is opened slightly, theological debate and disagreement is more prevalent within and among Protestant denominations and independent groups. This in fact is a major reason for Protestant splintering in the first place. It is why Christian beliefs themselves represent stunning diversity across and within denominational lines.

The upside is that modern Protestant Christians are exercising their right to think for themselves when it comes to matters of faith and morals rather than allowing a church or denomination to tell them what to believe. Instead of seeing this as something positive, though, many church leaders see this as a bad thing. If they happen to be in positions of authority, they often become quite defensive of the church’s right to define Christian beliefs everyone should embrace. I think this has been a major factor in the massive exodus from the church we have witnessed in the last forty plus years, and now we are seeing its effects on the credibility of Christianity itself.

I am not suggesting that there are no normative beliefs in Christianity, only that the  history and diversity of their development don’t justify using them as tests of faith or fellowship. They can serve as statements of faith, which interestingly enough was the original purpose of church creeds in the first place. Conformity of beliefs has never served Christianity well, mainly because it divides rather than unites Christians. It doesn’t have to be this way. The Christian faith is quite capable of being examined and challenged and re-evaluated, if it understands itself to be about values instead of beliefs.

I am not talking about a new Christianity. I am talking about the focus Christianity should have had in the first place. Religions promote specific beliefs, but my argument is that the words of Jesus make it abundantly clear that following him is about a particular way of living in the world. Not that the church doesn’t know this. It just chose to  emphasize right beliefs, in large part because right beliefs served the goal of establishing ecclesial authority that in turn helped maintain at least some control over what Christians believed. (In his argument for the value of creeds in the book, The Creed: What Christians Believe and Why it Matters, Luke Timothy Johnson makes the point that the value and role of creeds has suffered from the way the church has used them as tests of faith).

One of the criticisms I have already encountered in conversations about my thesis is that I am making an argument that is a distinction without a difference. “We live the way we believe,” I have been told, making what we believe essential to living the lifestyle to which Jesus calls Christians to live. But that misses the point. I am not saying that beliefs don’t matter or have no influence on what people do. My contention is that beliefs don’t matter as much as the church says and not in the way the church insists they do. A values-based Christianity is not in conflict with beliefs. If anything, a focus on values creates an environment that gives beliefs room to breathe and flourish. A focus on beliefs has the opposite effect on values, constricting their power to the point of nearly choking the life out of them. The roots of my realization that beliefs and values represent a distinction that reflects a huge difference in people’s lives go back to growing up in a racist Southern culture where churches taught a form of Christianity that did not believe segregation was inconsistent with being Christian, but that is getting ahead of myself. As we begin I simply want to highlight the primary focus traditional Christian teaching places in beliefs when Christians would be better served by a focus on values.

If you self-identify as Christian or once did because you were raised as one, you have encountered first-hand this emphasis on right beliefs I find so troubling. In the course of my ministry I think I have met about every kind of Christian there is. I know Christians who believe what they believe and nothing is ever going to change them. I know other Christians who are the opposite of the ones just described. They are not sure what they believe so what they believe is pliable and flexible. Still others have strong beliefs, but are constantly reading and studying to learn more than they know and have no timidity in adjusting what they believe to new information. What all these people have in common is that beliefs matter to them. What differentiates them is that members of the first group have a faith defined by beliefs while the others at minimum are  uncomfortable with the beliefs they have been told Christians should believe.

The nature of religion is such that diversity is always present whether it is embraced, resisted, or ignored. This book seeks to make a case for diversity in beliefs being core to the kind of Christianity that is focused on following Jesus rather than “believing in” him or explaining who he was. By the time you finish reading I hope you will at the very least understand that the message of Jesus can be set free from all the wrappings of beliefs that have squeezed the life out of it for people who refuse to have “blind faith.” There is a Christian path forward that makes freedom of thought a gift of faith rather than something to be feared. Christianity focused on living rather than believing need never be afraid of people whose faith is open minded and open ended.

At the same time, though, I want to say unequivocally that I am not at all interested in trying to persuade anyone to give up something they fervently believe or believe in. Changing beliefs is an inside job that happens when people are ready for it and usually not a moment before. It can happen for a variety of reasons, but it seldom happens by someone trying to persuade another person to change his or her mind.

More important is the fact that trying to persuade you or anyone to abandon one belief in favor of another misses the point of the book entirely. I don’t offer alternatives to replace the “right” beliefs you may have been taught or have heard define Christianity. Instead, I try to explain why a beliefs-based faith takes you down the wrong road and, thus, hinders rather than helps you live as a Christian in the modern world.

There are, then, three basic claims I make in the book. The first is the need to understand and accept the nature of beliefs. The second is the need to realize that the church defining what it means to be a Christian by beliefs was a mistake with enormous, even tragic, consequences. The third is the need to see that Jesus said very little about beliefs, but said a lot about living a particular kind of lifestyle based on values he lived and taught to others. What I hope you will discover if you are among those who have trouble believing what the church says you must believe is that you are not the problem. The
church is. As you will see, I have a few things to say about the church throughout the book because it is impossible to talk about Christianity without mentioning the church. At the same time, the real focus is telling you about being Christian in spite of what you believe or don’t believe, not because of it. In these pages I suggest an alternative to a Christian faith bound and weighted down by creeds, doctrines, and dogmas—formal and informal.

It will help you to bear in mind as you go that the chapters are interconnected,  succeeding ones building upon the ones that come before them and questions arising in one chapter being answered in a different one. By the time you reach the end, though, I think you will have a clear sense of where you are and how you got there. My goal is not that you agree with what I have written, only that it helps you to think for yourself about matters of beliefs while understanding that being Christian has less to do with what you believe at any point in your life and more to do with how you live your life all the time. In the process I hope you will see what I see, that Christianity is a rich faith tradition that doesn’t have all the answers, but does raise many of the right questions, and further, that its basic message is not about “right beliefs,” but about “right living.”

PRICE: $16.95.

CONTACT THE AUTHOR: janlinn45@gmail.com.

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