Unsettled Christianity

I, along with a friend of mine and fellow journeyer, will be editing a book featuring a collection of essays relating to those who have come from fundamentalism to join the ranks of Traditional Christianity. The book will also feature the Dark Night of the Soul by St. John of the Cross as a meditation between stories (after all, the mystics have caused me to consider).

I’ll issue the call for papers next week, but I’ve already been in contact with a few bloggers who’ve experienced such a crisis in their faith and continued, moving from a world of black and white to a world of gray.

We are still believers, those of us who were fundamentalists before, but many are not. Many do not make the transition well.

There are some good things in our former life – for me, personally, it is the reliance on Scripture – but there are some bad stuff too. This will be a collection of deeply personal stories (names changed to protect everyone) about how we resolved, when our worlds were taken out from under us, our faith in conflict. What were our walls that we hit? Where’d we come from and where’d we land? Maybe we’ll talk about some of our internal struggles, stuff like that. Deeply personal.

Not all of us survived intact. Sometimes, Humpty Dumpty was put back together again still cracked and missing some of the shell.

True believers – and I was – who change are like those who have breathed air all of their lives suddenly find themselves being forced to breathe water.

This is not going to be a pity party, but an honest look at the hearts and minds of those who chose to believe God rather than themselves, those who believed that God was in fact bigger than their previous box would allow – those who overcome the greatest temptation, to believe that their personal god was the only god.

If you are interested, please let me know.

I’ll issue the call for papers next week, I think.

I have two more proposals out for consideration. We’ll see.

It is scheduled to be published sometime next year by Energion.

Post By Joel (9,271 Posts)

Joel L. Watts holds a Masters of Arts from United Theological Seminary with a focus in literary and rhetorical criticism of the New Testament. His interests include exploring the role of mimesis in human civilization, specifically in the study of religion and media, as well as science fiction and the way in which it has allowed mythology to be explored in light of scientific discoveries of the past century. He is the author of Mimetic Criticism of the Gospel of Mark: Introduction and Commentary (Wipf and Stock, 2013) and a co-editor and contributor to From Fear to Faith: Stories of Hitting Spiritual Walls (Energion, 2013).

Website: → Unsettled Christianity

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