Honest To Goodness: An Ethical and Spiritual Odyssey

Honest to Goodness proposes a new Christian presence that is free of dogmatism exclusivism and biblicism. It charts a way back to the spiritual and ethical revolution begun by Jesus of Nazareth one that can make a vital difference to needless evils such as bigotry environmental destruction poverty and violence. The book reveals the authors experience of living under against and after apartheid insisting that a faith that does not confront this worlds evils is no faith at all but a dangerous betrayal of all that is good beautiful and true. Honest to Goodness unflinchingly identifies the grave moral shortcomings that are embedded in traditional Christian beliefs and practices and proposes ways of transforming them into harmony with the divine goodness that the author discerns everywhere. Embracing a world of religious diversity science and creative philosophy the book describes a new way of experiencing and expressing the divine. It defends faith by moving beyond both theism and atheism. The twentieth century was one in which deconstruction held sway. Some Christians held ever more tightly to earlier ideas. Many saw Christianity as irrelevant or worse. Some modified Christianity to disconnect it from what was being deconstructed and relate it to the new situation. Prozesky insightfully and movingly recounts his own path through these options and beyond them to calling all to a total commitment to the good which in his case is deeply inspired by the historical Jesus. Conservative and liberal Christians atheists and those who are spiritual but not religious and members of other faith communities will all profit from his appreciative analysis and sensitive criticisms. Following his journey is a moving and even gripping experience. Learn from his journey and think for yourself. --John B. Cobb Jr. Center for Process Studies and Process & Faith Martin Prozesky invites us in Honest to Goodness to join him on his amazing ethically spiritual and spiritually ethical journey. He navigates the worlds of conservative liberal and progressive Christianity. These worlds are reimagined and refashioned through the lens of good or goodness. We do well to hitch a ride with him and alight enlivened and enlightened to continue our own journey. --Cornel Barnett pastor Presbyterian Church (USA) retired Martin Prozesky is a research fellow on the faculty of theology and religion at the University of the Free State in South Africa. He studied theology at Rhodes and Oxford Universities and at the former Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge Massachusetts. He did his doctorate on Friedrich Schleiermacher and has been a visiting scholar at universities in South Africa the United States Trinity College Oxford and Australia. The author of six books he is currently researching Jesus as ethical revolutionary.