ISBN: 1723841943 9781723841941

Category: Religion / Faith

Page count: 207

FROM THE AUTHOR ON WHAT THE BOOK IS ABOUT <b>Today, many people who are seeking a deeper relationship with the Ultimate Source of being, power, value, and meaning are experiencing their churches and other religious institutions as anything but welcoming.</b> Religious communities' demands for unquestioning loyalty all too often stifle the quest for answers to hard questions about faith by actively discouraging the asking of them in the first place.In my view, <b>coming to faith and living faithfully require confronting serious questions, respecting honest doubts, and scrutinizing religious beliefs and practices in the light of our own experiences and life-situations.</b> This book offers encouragement to believers, inquirers, and skeptics alike who, like me, can see no way toward a credible, personal faith that does not include thinking things out for oneself, whatever the consequences of doing so may be for religious affiliations or the lack of them.Who am I to undertake a venture like this? I am a happily involved United Methodist minister who cherishes the opportunities I have been given across half a century to serve as a pastor, university chaplain, counselor, and seminary professor of both theology and pastoral care. Currently, I teach in the <i>Graduate Programs of Liberal Studies at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.</i> My wife and best friend, Nancy, and I have been married for over fifty years, and we live in Richardson, Texas. Nancy and our two daughters, Jennifer and Allison, and our two grandchildren, Reiss and McKenna, have challenged me over the years, without always knowing it, with very important and difficult questions about faith, and have not been in the least hesitant about telling me or saying what they think of my attempts to answer them.For the past seven years, I have also been writing about belief and doubt, religious discovery and disaffection, soul-sickness and soul-transformation on my website, faithchallenges.com, which has generated more than 1,700,000 sign-ins. For this book, I have revisited and revised 90 essays originally posted on the website. I selected them because they generated particularly deep and searching responses, both positive and negative, which have continued to influence my thinking and writing. For them, and for the many responses to my other postings, I am more grateful than I can adequately express.