The wonderful thing about Still Christian is how the story is told about the shift within the Southern Baptist church from moderate to evangelical and the far right.

Most of the book is about Gushee himself and his life as a Baptist professor and leader. I was not familiar with who Gushee was, but looked him up after reading the book which gave a bit more insight. As a professor, he faced a wide variety of situations and felt safe being part of the Baptist community.

The shift happens as the church moves to a right wing, conservative, and evangelical church attacking environmentalism, the LGBTQ community, and a wide variety of topics. Gushee tells the story of how that happens gradually, yet quite intentionally. This was a planned movement that was strategically done to put the right people into leadership positions while pushing out the more moderate leaders until the church and all the colleges were taken over.

The amazing thing about the book is even though he is telling the story of his church, he is also essentially talking about the shift within the US, especially within the GOP.

I am not sure I would recommend the book to a larger group, but I found his sections on why global warming was threatening to the evangelical community was fascinating. It opened a whole new insight into an argument I do not understand how one could argue with it.

I gave this one 3.5 stars. ( )

This is a bold, honest and fascinating book. Gushee was perhaps best known initially for his Kingdom Ethics book written with one of his mentors Glenn Stassen - he then changed his mind regarding the Christian approach to homosexuality and became infamous. As a result of his change of mind, IVP refused to reprint Kingdom Ethics, so Eerdmans took up the option.

Still Christian is the inside story of one person’s move from Catholicism to fundamentalism to net-evangelicalism to his present position. As Gushee puts it:

‘So this book will resolve my inner conflicts, profile some fascinating people, dish some really interesting dirt, explain the culture wars—and talk about what God might have to do with any of this.’

But not for one moment did he stop believing in the risen Christ - hence the title of this book Still Christian. He writes:

‘I still believe in Jesus. Indeed, I believe in him more than ever. I need him more than ever. Some days the only thing I have left of my Christianity is Jesus. And that’s okay.’

Whatever you think of Gushee’s present views this book provides a fascinating insider account of some recent trends in evangelicalism; obviously, he is only presenting one side, but in many ways, that is what makes this book such a great read. His view of evangelicalism may be slightly warped but it has more than a smidgin of truth:

‘But hard experience over several decades leads me now to conclude that evangelicalism was in one sense a rebranding effort on the part of a cadre of smart fundamentalists around 1945.’
And

‘My analysis is that if evangelicals are best identified as essentially a massively successful rebranding effort of old-school fundamentalism, the starting point from which the modern evangelical community emerged was obscurantist and provincial, routinely anti-intellectual, antiscience, and antimodern. It has only been seventy years since evangelicalism emerged from this musty closet, and it sometimes shows.’

Gushee is honest with his struggles and this is one of the things that makes this book so interesting. It is certainly worth reading. I for one am glad to have read it - even though I wouldn’t agree with everything that Gushee holds; not least his view of Calvinism: ‘This is my best chance to say that I believe the resurgence of a doctrinaire Calvinism in contemporary evangelicalism is among the most odious developments of the last generation.’ It is a bold book and hopefully, evangelicals will read it and take time to reflect on his criticisms. ( )

3.5 stars. I don't usually write reviews, but out of my deep admiration for Mr. Gushee, I feel the need to explain my rating. What's here is really good and I appreciate it, but it's so short. I would have really appreciated a deeper, more involved look into his life and what he's learned since, as he admits himself, so many of his experiences are so relevant to the story of evangelicalism over the past few decades. He's seen everything up close and experienced a rise and fall that is so deeply linked to what evangelicalism has become. There's a richness to his story that I don't feel we ever quite got to in this volume. It felt very cursory to me.

In fairness, perhaps this is as personal as he's willing to be and he's just a relatively private person. That is, of course, his own prerogative, but it leaves me as a reader wanting a lot more. ( )