Introduction

Do you ever wonder about the apparent conflict between the loving spirit of Jesus and the harsh and punitive God of the Old Testament? Are you sometimes put off by the seemingly un-Christian attitudes and behavior of many Christians and Christian religious organizations? Have you ever thought about whether it is possible to be a Christian without a literal belief in the Virgin Birth or the physical resurrection of Jesus? Answers to these and many similar questions can be found within the Bible itself - answers that are often surprisingly at odds with the doctrines and practices of Christian religion.

Few would disagree that the Bible is the most important book in the history of Western civilization. Even in this secular age most bookstores devote an entire section to the many different versions of the Christian Bible. But how many people read the bible out of curiosity about the amazing and sometimes bewildering array of material contained within the more than 1,300 pages of most editions? Is it not more common for people to read the bible to reinforce the beliefs they already hold, or to simply accept the positions of their church about what the Bible means?

My own reading of the bible has caused me to believe that much of what is called Christianity today, and what has been called Christianity for almost two thousand years, is something quite different from, and often opposed to, the spirit of Jesus as presented in the bible. I am, of course, not the first to come to such a conclusion. There has long been criticism of organized Christian religion. Until the last couple of centuries anyone expressing such views could expect to be persecuted, perhaps even tortured and killed by Christians--Catholics and Protestants alike--who claimed to be acting in Jesus' name.

Until the eighteenth century, religious doctrines created by the leadership of Catholic and Protestant churches dominated Western civilization to such an extent that the spirit of Jesus, as it is presented in the Bible, was often almost completely obscured. And while the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century overcame the most extreme forms of religious persecution, it also brought with it the secularization of society and a gradual drift away from spirituality of any kind.

In writing a book about Christianity, I am aware that much of what I have to say may be unacceptable, perhaps even offensive, to many believers. But though the book is often critical of Christian relgion, it is very supportive of what the Bible itself tells us about Jesus and the New Testament spirituality of Jesus, Paul, and John. The book's point of view might be characterized as that of someone who, although very much a product of the modern secular world, wants to believe that there is some ultimate meaning to religious faith, and in particular to Christian faith.

I also recognize that openness to the reality and importance of religious faith is disturbing to many nonbelievers who seem to feel, sometimes quite strongly, that religious faith is nothing more than superstition or delusion. It is easy to understand that some Christians feel that their religious beliefs are too personal, or too spiritual, to be a proper subject for discussion outside their own church or with someone whose motives they might not trust. What is harder to understand is how uncomfortable professed nonbelievers often become at the mere suggestion that spiritual matters might be an appropriate subject for discussion. Perhaps some of them are not as sure as they would like to be that religion has nothing to offer them.

It should also be acknowledged that nonbelievers are understandably antagonized by what Christians and Christian religious institutions alike have done throughout history to alienate many well-meaning people from the spirit of Jesus. It is all too common to encounter the most un-Christian behavior among churchgoing Christians, while at the same time it is not unusual to encounter exemplary Christian conduct on the part of people who profess no active Christian faith.

It was this paradox that prompted the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer to speculate on the possibility of "religionless Christianity" in letters smuggled out of his Nazi prison cell. Bonhoeffer was discouraged by the number of German Christians who supported Hitler and impressed by the sacrifices for others made by many non-Christians during World War II. Bonhoeffer's idea that religion as we know it may have become an obstacle to Christian faith in the modern world has challenged theologians and religious leaders for the fifty years since he was hanged by the Nazis for his opposition to Hitler.

This book looks at Christian spirituality from the perspective of Bonhoeffer's idea of "religionless Christianity" and attempts to see if the spiritual power of Christian faith can exist apart from participation in some form of organized religion.

Some of the specific questions about Christianity that will be explored are:

Who or what does the Bible say God is? Is Jesus' God the same God as the God of the Jews of ancient Israel? What is Christianity? Can it be defined? There seem to be almost as many views on this question as there are Christians. Is there a common ground of essential Christian beliefs on which all Christians could agree?

How did Christianity get started? What does Christianity have in common with the Judaism of the Old Testament, and how did Christianity depart from its Jewish beginnings? What was the religious and cultural environment like during Jesus' time and how did it influence the development of Christianity? What was it like to be Christian in the first three hundred years of the Chrisitian era, when simply to be a Christian could literally mean being fed to lions?

Christianity has an extensive language of its own that is meaningful to believers. Can that language be translated into secular terms without losing its spiritual meaning? In the background of Christian religious practice a battleground of theological debate has always existed. What is it that theologians have argued about?

There are hundreds of denominations, sects, and religious practices that collectively make up the Christian religion. What are the differences between them? For example, what is a "charismatic" and what does it mean to be slain by the Spirit and to speak in tongues? What makes Catholicism different from all forms of Protestantism, and is one "right" and the other "wrong"?

What was the impact of the Enlightenment on Christianity, and how did Christianity respond to that challenge? Can Christian faith be reconciled with modern ways of thinking or must Christians reject the discoveries of modern science as inconsistent with "biblical history"? Has the separation of church and state relegated Christianity to the personal sphere, or can, and should, Christianity still have a direct impact in the political arena?

What about Jesus himself? What can be learned from the Bible about his life and teachings? What is the difference between Jesus as portrayed in the New Testament and the Christ of Christian religious doctrine? For more than two hundred years biblical scholars have been trying to identify the "historical Jesus." What have these scholars contributed to our understanding Jesus and Christianity?

How have society and culture responded to Christianity over the past two thousand years and to what extent has Christianity departed from Jesus' own spiritual message in order to fulfill social and cultural objectives? How does Christianity relate to the problems of our own time? What do Jesus and the Bible say about issues like abortion and family values?

In discussing these questions, I have tried to avoid, as much as possible, the partisan language that often characterizes the debates between believers and nonbelievers and among believers themselves. This is more difficult than it sounds because religious language is itself the subject of debate. On the other hand, to address spiritual matters in purely secular terms tends to diminish the spiritual element. Some Christians feel that religious language is simply not translatable to those who have not experienced faith themselves. They feel that faith cannot be explained--it just is.

Some Christians may object to the title Jesus Didn't Go To Church because the Bible contains several references to Jesus going to synagogues. For example, in chapter 2 of the Gospel of Luke there is a story of the twelve-year-old Jesus staying behind in the temple at Jerusalem causing his parents "great anxiety" during the three days that they searched for him. But the biblical accounts of Jesus' visits to church during his ministry, which according to Luke began when he was about thirty years old, show that he was anything but a churchgoer as we understand the word today. In chapter 6 of the Gospel of John, Jesus is protrayed as saying things in the synagogue at Capernaum that were so shocking that "many of his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him." Matthew, in chapter 12 of his gospel, tells how Jesus entered a synagogue and cured a man's withered hand on the sabbath. This was such a serious offense (considered to be a violation of one of the Ten Commandments) that Jesus had to flee from the synagogue to save his own life.

M. Scott Peck, MD, author of The Road Less Traveled

- Faith and Freedom (UK)

- American Library Association Booklist

- National Catholic Reporter

- Maine in Print

- Harvey Cox
-Harvard theologian and author of The Secular City

- Rev. Charles Bergstrom
- Executive Committee Co-Chair, People for the American Way