Jesus Brand Spirituality

I wrote Jesus Brand Spirituality: He Wants His Religion Back to present Jesus as the treasure buried in field of religion for people who are curious about Jesus, maybe even dedicated followers, but not drawn to contemporary Christian culture.”He Wants His Religion Back” is an acknowledgement that over the past thirty years or so there has been a kind of trademark infringement on the Jesus Brand.

If you’re the kind of person who doesn’t lean conservative politically or culturally, if you’re the kind of person who enjoys National Geographic or Discover magazine, and doesn’t have a bone to pick with mainstream science, if you’re the kind of person who finds Rush Limbaugh annoying; in other words, if you’re about half the U.S. population, the part of the population that is most turned off to American Christianity, then you’ve been given plenty of good reasons not to pay attention to the Christian message…or to be a Christian who feels like a fish out of water in the current Christian culture, because the people with the loudest media megaphones have been defining the Jesus brand in a particular way that doesn’t include you.

Though I’m an evangelical, properly understood, serving on the national board of a newer evangelical denomination, I feel like a stranger in much of what passes for standard American evangelical culture.

I come by this honestly. I wasn’t raised evangelical and I haven’t been especially well socialized into the evangelical culture. In fact I was raised the opposite of evangelical. Not atheist, worse, Episcopalian. (I say this with a certain whimsy.) We Episcopalians didn’t get too personal about our faith in the 1950’s. I grew out of mine, which was more or less expected. I had a five year sojourn as an atheist before getting my girlfriend pregnant and finding myself married and a father at age eighteen. At which point I did the sensible thing and found God, but only because I was fascinated, drawn, lured into God through Jesus of Nazareth.

I came to faith in the Jesus movement of the Jesus Christ Superstar era. There wasn’t a Religious Right to speak of in 1970. My hippie Jesus freak friends were if anything, left leaning, anti-war, pro-ecology types whose blue jean jackets bore the leftover scent of a particular botanical variety, ingested for it’s mood altering effects.

I planted and continue to pastor a Vineyard church in Ann Arbor, Michigan, which is not exactly an evangelical strong-hold kind of town. The perspectives contained in the book germinated in my home church. For some time now we’ve run a class for newcomers called, Introducing Jesus Brand Spirituality, organized around the framework of the book–active, contemplative, biblical, communal.

I’m blessed to be around some creative and clear thinking staff who have been an important part of my perspective shaping over the years. Our worship pastor is from a working class London family and a world class blues guitar man; our associate pastor was a card carrying atheist who went to the University of California Berkely, where he met the famous (for fifteen minutes) “naked guy” in an elevator; our assistant pastor grew up in inner city Washington, D.C. then attended Wooster College in Ohio, and worked for IBM before going into ministry. Our children’s ministry pastor grew up in Chicago, came to faith as a young adult (which she still is) and is just finishing her biblical studies program. And our Single Moms pastor married me before she went into the God business. I suppose I was part of the reason she needed the crutch of religion!

So for a long time, for personal reasons–my own upbringing, loved ones who are understandably turned off by standard American Christianity, an insatiable curiosity, a father raised by a man who was the black sheep in a strict fundamentalist Christian environment–and because I want to reach people outside of faith in the middle of Ann Arbor, I’ve been working on how to communicate Jesus to people put off by his religion. Which means I’ve been paying attention to the part of me that identifies with this sensibility.

Because where it counts, I am evangelical, a word that I can’t shake even though the sound of it makes me cringe for all that it has come to mean. I believe that Jesus is the pearl of great price, the treasure buried in the field of religion. I believe that many people who need God are missing him. And that God is missing many people and his heart is filled with pain as a result.

So while the book isn’t a diatribe against the Religious Right–it’s a book on spirituality, not social issues per se–it was written with the people turned off to Christianity for these reasons (some of them active Christians who feel a kind of alienation in their own religious tribe)–it was written with them in mind. To them, for them. Because I’m one of them.

It’s been about fourteen years since I last wrote a book, so I was rusty and a little intimidated by the prospect. Especially since I found myself working with a literary agent, Kathy Helmers, who was very good at her craft, so I figured I might have a shot at having this book published by a big publishing house. (I met Kathy at conference on prayer that I did with Phyllis Tickle, called Pilgrim Nation. Kathy gave me her card and offered to represent me if I ever wanted to get into writing again. I took the card and called her and that’s why such a book now exists.)

Everything clarified for me when I decided to write the book for four particular people who became my imagined audience. A couple were faith insiders experiencing a great deal of angst over the state of their religious tribe, some were faith outsiders with a secret interest in Jesus and not a clue as to where that interest might be pursued, but certainly not in a church. In a very real sense, I wrote the book for them and nobody else, but of course, it’s my hope that others will benefit–or a least the buy the book!–as it seems a lot of effort and certainly not worth the Publisher’s advance to sell four copies. Check that, because there’s no guarantee the four for whom I wrote this will buy book it, not knowing it was written for them, or perhaps knowing it, not caring.

I do know there are lot of people, even people well connected in their churches, who have loved ones–baby boomers with adult children, especially—who need a new way to understand and talk about Christian spirituality that would be more attractive to their loved ones on the outside of faith looking in.

There are certainly a lot of people who maintain a Christian identity but have dropped out of the church enterprise for this reason. And there are many who might buy a book about Jesus by a Buddhist but would think twice about buying one from someone with the Christian label. Maybe the sub-title will entice them.

The success oriented faith of so much American Christianity doesn’t work for the people for whom this book was written. Vigorous defenses of Christian faith against the attacks of godless secular humanists doesn’t work for them. Anything that assumes that cultural-political conservatism or suspicion of science is the way of faithfulness to Jesus doesn’t work for them. When they see Christian contemporary worship on cable television, they aren’t drawn in.

I have a massive soft spot for these people, because I am one of them.