The Self- Destruction of America’s Churches

By Duke Robinson

How are you feeling about America’s churches?

As a progressive with a history in Christianity, you may think traditional, American churches have nothing to do with redemptive reality, and you kissed them goodbye a long time ago. I understand. Or you remain part of church life but are sick at heart over their self-destructive disengagements from reality, and their dying on a vine that is dead. In either case you can see, as I can, that things show signs of falling apart, that the center appears not to be holding, whether it’s the democratic ideals of American democracy, or the biblical God about whom churches endlessly chatter.

Here is not just another book on church renewal. No suggested window dressing, no getting a bit hip. No business as usual or continuing to go through the motions. It’s time to do, rather than to die. It’s put up or shut up time. So, in this book I call for an urgent and radical transformation of the way churches think and talk. I want to return them to the gospel’s spiritual tap root of Agape that’s been smothered by archaic tradition. I want to reboot them for authentic community where deep friendships can form marked by first names, laughter, tears and embraces. I want to remake their sterile faces and sentimental smiles for robust witness to the spiritual “grace and truth” that we all know make us real.

One side of the book confronts the indifferent, self-contradictory Big-Guy-in-the-Sky-God that Bible teachers and pastors have plopped on people in the pews. All the while, professional, progressive scholars have said that this biblical God died in the 1960’s, and no longer holds water with intelligent people who are thinking. Most church people don’t know that or think about it. The book’s other side highlights Jesus’ love-your-enemy, nonviolent, peace-with-justice Love that most churches avoid, content to let it sit in in God’s shadow.

This book, born in the author’s mind five years ago and published late in 2021, looks at the significance of words for creating worlds, the central God problem, Jesus’ agapeic Love, the significance of truth, and the important, ever-dangerous Evangelicalism. It identifies these critical matters facing churches and provides a foundation for thinking more specifically about how to connect them with reality and Love. With such specificity in mind, the author is working on a sequel to this book, For Christ’s Sake! Will Churches Stop and Think?!

If you are part of a church, wouldn’t you like it to stop living in the past? Wouldn’t you like it to think and talk so you didn’t have to check your brain at the door on Sunday morning? Wouldn’t you like to know what it will take for your church to have intellectual integrity? And even if your church looks successful on the outside, wouldn’t you like it to stop dying on the inside?

As a church person, along with everyone else, the modern, natural world of science shapes your thinking and living during the week. Then on Sundays, you enter the biblical and medieval world of the weird, enchanted forest with ghosts, demons, angels, and other supernatural creatures. To date, you have not acknowledged this deadly contradiction. Either you have not been consciously aware of it or, you have been, but you have not known what to do about it and are afraid that facing it could cost you friends, emotional security, and grief. At the same time, you suspect your church is failing in its witness to Jesus’ profound good news and dying internally.

Some clergy and churches will use this book for study groups.

From the Back Cover

Even the most successful of America’s more than 325,000 churches are killing themselves. They cling to the Bible’s ancient perspectives on reality while embracing a modern worldview that contradicts it. This produces what George Orwell, in his book, 1984, called doublethink, and it results in churches speaking out of both sides of their mouths. It causes them to suffer what psychologists call cognitive dissonance. This phrase describes the mental discomfort, disorientation, and destruction we experience when our basic beliefs are either at odds with one another or with our knowledge of the real world. Both conflicts characterize the beliefs of churches. To many non-church observers, they are patently obvious.

Reviews

“This compelling book will provide insights and encouragement to anyone who seeks fresh thought on how to live life in the light of central Christian teachings and stories, while thinking critically and honestly in our post-Christian age.” – HEIDI HADSELL, President Emeritus of Hartford Seminary

“In all his books, Duke Robinson superbly presents truth, insight, thoughtful investigation, and revelation. This, his latest book, will bring spiritual enlightenment to both the religious and the atheist. I encourage all to read this brilliantly written book by a religious scholar and philosopher. His exceptional writing style will enhance your reading experience.” – MARVIN BERENSON, MD, Clinical Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry USC Keck School of Medicine, Dept. of Psychiatry, Author: Dynamic Retirement, Let’s Sit Down and Talk

“I’ve struggled with the concepts of right and wrong, good and evil, love and hate, and reward and punishment throughout my career. This book sorts out traps that befuddle so many of us when we attempt to make complicated, consequential decisions about other people’s behavior as well as our own. One does not have to be a church person to benefit greatly from Duke Robinson’s refreshing, insightful analyses.” – PATRICIA KEITH-SPIEGEL, Past Chair of the Ethics Committee of the American Psychological Association and Co-author: Ethics in Psychology and the Mental Health Professions

“As an activist atheist, I am perhaps not the typical reader of—or advocate for—a book like Duke Robinson’s excellent The Self-Destruction of America’s Churches. But I respect Duke’s vision of what a good church might look like. For believers looking for something better out of the church experience than what they are currently getting, this is a must read.” – ERIC MAISEL, Author: Lighting the Way

About the Author
In 2000, Time Warner published the paperback version of Duke Robinson’s award-winning hardcover book GOOD INTENTIONS, under the title TOO NICE FOR YOUR OWN GOOD: How to Stop Making 9 Self-Sabotaging Mistakes. It appears in 13 languages and as an early Kindle book. It still sells briskly. His second non-fiction book, CREATE YOUR BEST LIFE: How to Live Fully Knowing One Day You Will Die, appeared in December 2011, published through CreateSpace. In September 2012, he published his novel, also through CreateSpace, SAVIOR: An Old Notion in a New Novel of Unthinkable Absurdity . Robinson holds a BA degree in philosophy (1954) from Wheaton College, a Masters of Divinity degree (1958), from Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary and his doctorate from San Francisco Theological Seminary (1979). In April 2014, Robinson published another award-winning, nonfiction work, A MIDDLE WAY: The Secular/Spiritual Road to Wholeness. Retired, Duke lives in Walnut Creek, CA, about 25 miles northeast of San Francisco.