A Heretic's Guide to Eternity

Just finished Spencer Burke's A Heretic's Guide to Eternity. Burke identifies with "heretics" such as Galileo and Copernicus, who challenged long-held beliefs of the church in the area of science. The book is also sprinkled with historical and graphic glimpses of how the "church" has dealth with heretics.

Burke comes down pretty hard on what he calls "institutional" religion without balancing that with the good that many, many local churches are doing. But his point is well taken. As a whole, the Christian faith has become both unfocused in their vision for the world and too focused on itself. Burke argues that God's grace is too large to be confined in the walls of a church, and that grace is an "opt-out" rather than an "opt-in" proposition. Burke also comes so close to universalism that he uses the term to describe his beliefs, but he hedges a little. He also uses the term "spirituality" as a way to differentiate between "church-going Christian" and "non-church-going Christian." He doesn't explain his use of these terms very well - certainly not as well as N.T. Wright uses the term "spirituality" in his new book, Simply Christian. (I'll say more about that book in another post.)

I don't disagree with Burke overall, I just think he hammers too much on the "bricks and mortar" churches. He virtually "gives up" on "institutional religion" and accuses churches of being barrier to individual spiritual growth and excluding people from God's grace, rather than extending God's grace to everyone. I think this is a result of Burke's background in the evangelical church, where exclusion and election are common themes.

One interesting part of the book is the periodic invitation to log onto Burke's website and discuss a specific topic. Very interesting way of tying paper to the web, and a great way to continue the dialogue.

I do recommend that you read this book (especially you, Craig!).