The Fundamentals of a Recovering Fundamentalist: Reorienting Towards the True, Good, and Beautiful

by Gabriel Gordon, Thomas Dahlman (contributor)

296 pages, Paperback

Published June 27, 2024

Reviews

[Christopher Thrutchley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been following Gabriel Gordon for a long time. It has been clear for several years now that Gabriel has a future as a formidable and challenging American theologian. I regard The Fundamentals of a Recovering Fundamentalist as Gabriel's magnum opus to date. Here's why.

Gabriel's animating concerns ebb and flow. Initially, he felt preoccupied by a lack of belief in ongoing prophecy, as readers will discover in this book. He has engaged with leading theologians and Analytic Philosophers of Religion and therefore involved himself in a number of controversies. As cursory examples, I note Peter Enns and incarnational models of biblical inspiration and Thomas Jay Oord and modern kenotic-inspired philosophical theodicies. Consistently, Gabriel has remained loyal to one of his fellow Anglicans: C. S. Lewis. Lewisian themes resound wherever Gabriel writes.

The Fundamentals of a Recovering Fundamentalist, I think, transcends Gabriel's prior adventures, though it no doubt ultimately emerges from them. This is so because it engages with the forgotten heart of Christianity, namely, the church. The Fundamentals of a Recovering Fundamentalist is ultimately a plea on behalf of the church, one along lines that are shockingly fresh and engaging.

Those who are interested in a synthetic account of the church that draws from all quadrants of space and time in the Christian world -- Origen in particular received an amount of attention that greatly pleased me -- would read Gabriel's latest release with profit. I especially commend to the interested readers his eighth chapter, which concerns the church and the many attempts to articulate that mystery.

Perhaps Gabriel and my most significant disagreement is in regard is to which institutional churches we regard as sufficiently catholic and orthodox, and therefore, worthy of membership. However, in terms of our theoretical accounts of what the church, whichever church it might be, actually consists of, we are more often than not in fundamental agreement.

Here is the link to the Amazon listing of the book (disclaimer: it is quite lengthy)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1666785687/...

[Annette Lofing · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gabriel is challenging in his approach of deconstructing the harsh fundamentalism completely and building your faith again centered around tradition, and Jesus as the Jewish Messiah, or as he would say 'Yeshua'. I thought his practical approach and thoughtful suggestions were helpful in terms of helping recovering fundamentalists move forward and learn what you truly believe after growing up in that tradition. He has some challenging statements, and some strongly held beliefs, but overall I thought his approach was, although untraditional, very helpful in reforming my faith. I appreciated his focus on community and the Body of Christ being a crucial aspect of Christianity, and how he argued against individualistic thinking.

[Ashley Cramer · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone who remains evangelical in theology, I wasn’t sure how I would feel about the topic of this book. Now that I have read it, I believe it invites all of us who claim to follow Jesus of Nazareth into a deep and necessary conversation about what exactly that means. I am thankful to Gordon for the way he challenges his readers to recognize where our western culture has influenced our faith and to reexamine how God is calling us to live. Though I don’t draw all the same conclusions as he does in the book, I’m grateful to have the conversation.

[Maria Hearing · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finished book 45 in 2024. The main “problem” with this book is how much I wanted to converse with the author, my friend Gabriel Gordon, in real time. This is an incredible engaging read which made me think deeply. I found myself excited to see how he was going to construct the argument for his conclusions. The sources he uses are beautifully diverse across time, space, tradition, and gender. This is practical, with an excellent set of recommended sources. I disagree with a decent portion of it (particularly chapter 8 ) but in a way that excites me to lean in to conversation and theology.