Book Review
ISBN
9780307731203
Categories
Religion
Hardback
Pages
272
Losing Your Faith, Finding Your Soul
by David Robert Anderson
After finishing this book and reading other reviews prior to
writing mine, I can see that this book is somewhat polarizing. It is apparently
controversial at least. The author David Robert Anderson is an Episcopal
minister in Connecticut who holds degrees from the University of Chicago and
Yale Divinity School. This is not his first foray into the writing forest. He
also wrote Breakfast Epiphanies. He is a very good writer with a proclivity for
inserting an illustration at a proper juncture in the book.
Now, to the substance of the book. As an ordained minister I
find it difficult to recommend this book to someone who is in a spiritual
crisis and needs sage advice. It appears he has written the book for either
backsliders or people who are on that slippery slope to apostasy. On page nine
he writes, “This is a book for people whose faith has failed them. It’s for
people who used to believe. People who pretend to believe, who are still
teaching their kids to believe, still going to church.” Anderson has broken
this book down into six sections, called passages.
1.
The Good-bye Gate
2.
Stand Apart
3.
Deep Dive
4.
Arrival Time: Now
5.
Unconditional Surrender
6.
Habits of the Heart.
The subject matter and the keywords he throws around are all
welcomed by most theologians and evangelical protestant ministers. The problem is that he puts too much emphasis on “self”. As he tells the writer in the
first passage to, “…leave the old conventional world behind…You need a powerful
new self.” (p. 44). In the passage entitled, Stand Apart, he tells the reader
to forget Heaven and Hell (for now).
In his effort to give directions for those teetering on the
edge of spiritual suicide he lays out these six passages which are wonderfully
written and bolstered with illustrations, but I believe scriptural advice is
hiding. I like the book as a read, again it was written nearly flawlessly,
however it is tinkering with eternity, so I don’t think mainline fundamentalist
Christians are going to embrace it and refer it to those in spiritual need.
After all is said and done, I give the book four stars.
I received this book from Blogging for Books, for my honest review.
