Reviewed by Brenton Reading

I am an Adventist but I don't believe in Adventism.  I say that because it is true and it captures your attention.  For similar reasons, Doug Pagitt includes the related statement, "I am a Christian but I don't believe in Christianity" at the beginning of his latest book, A Christianity Worth Believing.  Pagitt doesn't believe in the "versions of Christianity that have prevailed for the last fifteen hundred years, the ones that were perfectly suitable in their time and place," but answer questions we no longer ask and fail to answer questions we can no longer ignore.   I feel conflicted along with Pagitt, not because I struggle to believe, but because I want to believe differently.  

Like the book, this review is written from the perspective of a fellow traveler.  Pagitt's book is a flavorsome combination of personal memoir and theological treatise, and this review will follow a similar recipe.  A combination of personal anecdotes with amateur theology in the guise of a book review may not be for everyone's palate and probably doesn't fit with convention.  However, this is not a literary critique.  Since my training is in medicine and theology is my passion not my profession, literary skill and theological nuance tend to escape me, both Pagitt's and my own.  Whether or not his latest book is a literary masterpiece, Pagitt's gift is a conversational glimpse into the admittedly contrarian mind of an unnaturally born Christian with hopeful faith, honest questions, engaging stories, a wink and a smile.  

Pagitt begins with his conversion story when as a teenager he experienced the compelling story of Jesus in a passion play.  His experience brought to mind my own encounter with the passion of the Christ.  I played God once.  This may not be too shocking since medical doctors are often accused of playing God which is an analogy with particularly bad theology, suggesting that a detached egomaniac arbitrarily deciding who should live and die is acting like God.  But this story doesn't take place in a hospital.  Rather, it happened when I was portraying the part of Jesus in the SonRise Resurrection Pageant.  Playing Jesus in a passion play gave me a new perspective on what it might mean to act like God.  

The full weight of what I was doing struck me for the first time in the judgment scene.  As I looked out at the apathetic crowd and listened to the angry shouts of the mob, one woman's mournful cry rose above the rest, "Jesus...Jesus...Jesus!"  In that setting, her cry drove home our communal need for a savior to show us how to live and love.  I wanted to reach out and comfort the woman.  I wanted to transform the angry shouts into expressions of care and concern.  The simultaneously angry sounding and apathetic appearing crowd brought to mind all the suffering and brutality in our world that is both perpetrated and ignored.  I wanted to do something to make it better.  Tears flowed down my cheeks as I realized this is why Jesus came.  This is why Jesus died.  When one of the Roman soldiers interrupted my reverie to ask if I was all right I thought, "Wow, I am really getting into character."  Then, try as I might, I couldn't bring that transcendent moment back.  But, I continually both remember and forget the insight I received while playing God.  God is not a detached arbitrary egomaniac.  God is intimate, involved and seeking to bring healing, restoration, and renewal; a worthy act for anyone to follow, medical doctors included. 

This is the same good news expounded on in A Christianity Worth Believing. God is with us in our suffering, sinning, questioning, seeking, growing and healing.  The Bible is the story of God who seeks after the first recorded sinners, camps out with a bunch of freed slaves, shows up with three men in a blazing furnace, takes on flesh and bone, moves into the neighborhood, and finally promises to be with us to the end of the world.   As Pagitt puts it, "The good news of Christianity is that we are integrated with God, not separated from God."  He contrasts the Greek influenced "God of the gap" misperception of Christianity which views humanity as separated from God by a great gulf of sin with the Hebrew concept of Emmanuel, God with us. 

Pagitt paints a broad trail from the Greek philosophers to the enlightenment thinkers and bemoans the fact that the initially important work of contextualizing Christianity for the Greco-Roman culture has crystallized the faith of our fathers into rigid fundamentals which stifle questions, end conversations, fragment diverse communities, and stagnate spiritual lives.  In confronting fundamentalism, Pagitt explores the usual hot topics of inspiration, biblical literalism, and theories of the atonement.  Then just for good measure, he throws in a provocative statement on homosexuality.  

The frustration Pagitt describes in catching a glimpse of God's moving story and then confronting the rigid application of believers is reminiscent of my own journey within Adventism, a journey which I have nearly opted out of in the past.  We claim to have the truth in Adventism and rather than setting us free, it has often boxed us in.  It is fellow travelers such as Doug who have given me the hope to continue seeking.  The book's subtitle, "hope-filled, open-armed, alive-and-well faith for the left out, left behind and let down in us all" reads like a breath of fresh air.  Doug Pagitt along with other author's in the emerging Christianity conversation such as Brian McLaren, Tony Jones, Peter Rollins, and Phyllis Tickle have thrown open the windows and even a few doors, providing breathing room which has allowed me to find renewed meaning and purpose in Adventism. 

The compromising influence of Greek thought on the message of the Hebrew Messiah is a recurring theme throughout Pagitt's book.  As an Adventist, the example that comes immediately to mind is the Sabbath transition from Saturday to Sunday.  Pagitt never acknowledges this particular manifestation of the Greek infiltration, but he expounds on several other ways Greek thought and Constantinianism have warped our current Christian belief system.  With this in the background, the book's discussion ranges over multiple theological topics such as our perception of God as "up and out" versus "down and in," Christian escapism as opposed to living now in the kingdom of God, orginal sin, and substitutionary atonement with insights many (though not all) Adventists have neglected due to our myopic vision of Constantinianism in relation to the Sabbath.  

Pagitt not only takes a more holistic view of Hellenization and Christianity (by which I mean he takes an integrated multifaceted approach avoiding a narrow focus from one perspective).  He holds a holistic view of human beings as well, rejecting the Gnostic dualism so prevalent in Christianity today.  Pagitt describes us as whole, integrated beings.  This interconnected view of all things including our own human nature is one of his perspectives I resonate with the most.  Holistic thinking, though not an exclusively Adventist concept, is for many of us a vital part of Adventism.  My affinity for this encompassing viewpoint should come as no surprise since according to Bull and Lockhart in Seeking a Sanctuary, holism was introduced and supported within Adventism by the Adventist medical community.  Pagitt's recognition of the holistic nature of humans may be familiar territory by now for traditional Adventists.  Yet, when he pushes beyond our comfort zone into a discussion of ‘new age' alternative medicine in the name of holism, eyebrows will raise and some books and minds will close. 

But, this attitude of exclusion whether it results in rejecting alternative medicine due to perceived influences of eastern mysticism or any other us-versus-them polarity misses the larger perspective of holism.  Pagitt goes on to say that, "Christians like to talk about community, yet the dualistic assumptions surrounding our theology make it impossible for us to experience true community."  Adventists may be well versed in the concept that the body is not simply a receptacle for the soul.  Yet, as Pagitt reminds us, holism applies on a much larger scale than individual human beings and should expand our comfortable Adventist community when he writes, "connection, integration, and interdependence are written into the very fabric of creation."  We would benefit from a more holistic view of holism itself in order to believe differently and become a more embracing, active, integrated, and inclusive Adventist community.