Autorentext

Scott A. Bessenecker has spent his entire adult life working in one Christian organization and attending one local church community--plenty of time, he says, to be both a victim of and participant in the sins of the church.

Bessenecker serves as the director of global engagement and justice for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, an interdenominational campus ministry. He is the author of The New Friars, How to Inherit the Earth, and Overturning Tables. He and his wife Janine live in Madison, Wisconsin, and have three adult children.

Klappentext

It's time for the church to confront its checkered past--and present.

Christians have vigorously upheld the evil of slavery in the Americas, apartheid in South Africa, the Crusades, and internment camps. Religious wrongdoing is more than just history. Many today have suffered church-related trauma or have seen loved ones hurt by believers. Some of us have distanced ourselves from the church as a result. Others who have remained, perhaps reluctantly, may feel spiritually depressed from constant disappointment with religious people and institutions. Does admitting this make us bad Christians?

As someone who has spent 40 years working for a Christian organization and attending the same local church, author Scott A. Bessenecker has faced plenty of disappointment with the church--yet has experienced a richer spirituality by honestly facing the harms done by people who profess to follow Jesus. In Bad Religion, Good News, he offers a pathway for holding the historical and ongoing sins of the church alongside our conviction that God is good. Speaking openly about the sins of the church can lead everyday Christians to examine our own entanglement with a spirit of empire and domination and bring recovery from the ways we've been wounded and have wounded others.

Healing begins with an honest confrontation of the church's sins--and our complicity in them. This invitational guide will not only help you overcome disappointment with the church, but will invite you to embody the prophetic alternative to power and control that the church was always meant to be.