Lloyd Geering

A weak and cynical publication of Geering's dated ideas, brought out to make money for someone (I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, because he's such a nice man, so I shall say the publishers) as the millennium rolled over. Geering refuses to acknowledge that there is any mid-point between Don Cupitt and Billy Graham, between "Ditchkins" and Driscoll, and makes fame and money out of the refusal. In this edition he merely rehashes what he had by then long been saying. Half a point because I can't give lower.… (altro)

I enjoyed this book immensely. It is a reflective and honest account of the author’s personal journey. Interestingly, as he himself points out, much of what he had said prior to his trial was not new, but the gulf that existed between what was thought and taught in academic circles and what was understood and believed in the local church had not been bridged. “We do not know what God is”, wrote St Thomas Aquinas, and again, “If you understand, then it is not God”, said St Augustine. If this is true then from this premise follow two things. A warning that once we imagine that we have things sewn up, we have created an idol and secondly, that this understanding challenges us, indeed compels us, to a life-long search. A relationship with God can never be static.

Today Lloyd Geering is 92, I believe him to be something of a prophet. I wonder what he thinks when he considers the church today. He rather sadly makes the observation that at one point during the furore that surrounded his trial people began talking about religion, but that in some cases when enquirers approached the established churches some were made to feel unwelcome if they were seen to question the status quo.

This is a book to get you thinking. It may challenge you to consider things you hold dear: it is a book that many of us church going folk ought certainly to read and consider well.… (altro)