While I was on vacation this week I read Doug Pagitt's new book, “A Christianity Worth Believing: Hope-Filled, Open-Armed, Alive-And-Well Faith”. Doug offers a fresh perspective on theology for emerging Christianity. His new book is introspective and honest as he walks the reader through his own journey of rediscovering what it means to be a Christian. He fell in love with Jesus as a teenager, but soon realized his introduction to fundamentalism didn't live up to the story of Jesus that drew him into the faith. Doug does a wonderful job explaining how he eventually came to reconcile Jesus and Christianity.

I think Doug correctly locates the problem in the superficial way we were taught to read the Bible in western Christianity. Today, he says, we’re still interpreting the story of Jesus through the lenses developed for a world dominated by Greek dualism and gods that needed to be appeased. Total depravity and substitutionary atonement are doctrinal byproducts of the combination of this ancient mentality mingled with the modern world of legal systems. This book will no doubt receive its share of criticism from the reformed movement as Doug targets their two pet dogmas. I'm sure they will argue that he doesn't go deep enough in proving his case. I agree, and I would have enjoyed hearing a more detailed analysis, but there are already plenty of books aimed at waging theological wars. Doug takes a much more personal approach, and it makes this book a joy to read. Instead of an in depth theological dismantling of these misguided theories, Doug takes the lighter approach of story telling. Like most of us who come from Evangelical backgrounds, we love stories and we are used to getting fed theology through a good story. Personal stories are what makes Evangelical sermons so popular. Doug and his fellow emergent leaders Brian McLaren and Tony Jones are taking the best of progressive mainline theology and packaging it in the powerful art of personal stories. I think this is a potent mixture and will continue to catch on well with younger Evangelicals curious about emerging Christianity and already asking questions that are out of bounds in their local church.