Synopsis: This book offers a way to engage with the Bible as a set of
sacred texts that can serve as a song sheet for believers in exile-those
people Bishop John Shelby Spong calls the "church alumni association."
This includes those internally displaced persons of faith who have not
yet become spiritual refugees but who feel the pressure to conform to
traditional expressions of faith that no longer serve as springs of
living water for the journey of life. These ancient texts come from
another world and another time, but they can serve as maps for the
journey of life. They can best do this when the sacred wisdom of the
Bible is accepted as permission to voice the new questions we face today
in the confidence that authentic faith has always required such
boldness. Religious progressives are people who live the questions, not
dodge them. Our task is not to guard a set of traditional answers, but
to live life boldly, taking risks for God's sake and our own. One of the
hallmarks of this book is that the problems posed by the Bible are
acknowledged. In particular, the contributions of recent critical
scholarship are embraced, rather than being ignored or neutralized by
pious ambivalence. The intended reader of this book is not a traditional
believer, secure in her assumptions about God and salvation, but someone
struggling to live with integrity in a time when traditional religion
seems increasingly irrelevant. The goal is not to persuade the reader
that the Bible is credible but-more modestly-to offer an account of the
Bible that may encourage religious progressives to reclaim the Bible as
a valued part of our spiritual baggage. Endorsement: "Greg Jenks knows
his Bible as 'ancient texts that come from another world and another
time, ' wholly human in origin, sometimes mad, sometimes magnificent. He
buries the notion of a supernatural 'word of God' only to affirm the
continuing relevance of these words of yesterday's men for today's
'religious progressives who live the questions, not dodge them.' A
wonderful demonstration of how we might still find ways of singing the
Lord's song in the strange and brave new land of secular modernity."
-David Boulton author Who on Earth was Jesus? and The Trouble with God
"I have read [this] book and find it superb. It is a volume that the
market to laypersons of all religious persuasions, and those who do not
have a significant religious perspective, urgently needs. It fills an
obvious current vacuum, is highly readable, entertaining, and immensely
informative. -J. Harold Ellens author of Honest Faith for Our Time and
Probing the Frontiers of Biblical Studies "Greg Jenks takes his readers
on a new journey through the Holy Scriptures, reclaiming them with keen
scholarship for our post-religious world. After reading the work of this
emerging progressive religious thinker, the Bible will shine with a new
luster." -John Shelby Spong, author of Eternal Life: A New Vision and
Jesus for the Non-Religious Author Biography: Gregory C. Jenks is
Academic Dean at St Francis Theological College in Brisbane, Australia.
He is the author of The Origins and Early Development of the Antichrist
Myth (1991).
