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After the Good News: Progressive Faith Beyond Optimism
Progressive faith is at a crossroads. Liberal pulpits ring with grand sermons about the arc that bends toward justice, and about progress "onward and upward forever." Meanwhile, the people in the pews struggle to attend to the suffering of their souls and the tragic aspects of life. In this engaging polemic, using stories and metaphor, Nancy McDonald Ladd issues a call for change. Speaking from a rising generation of clergy and lay leaders who formed their commitments to liberal religion at the end of the optimistic modernist age, she shows how the religious life is not characterized by endless human advancement, but by lurching movement, crisis-management, and pain. With humor and humanity, Ladd calls religious progressives to greater authenticity and truth-telling rather than blind optimism. She charts a course forward that includes reclaiming rituals of atonement and lament, and becoming more vulnerable and accountable in our relationships. She shows how, together, we might build a necessary and greater resilience among ourselves and for the generations to come.
157 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 1, 2019
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90 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
January 29, 2023
I picked up this book after seeing it on a UU Wellspring reading list. Though I agreed with the overall message of the book, I felt it missed the mark in several ways that would make me reluctant to recommend it to others.
It is definitely not for your average lay person and reads very much like a divinity school thesis so the points about making our faith accessible to all seemed incongruous. Simpler language would have made the same points more effectively.
The UU congregation I attend is not heavily Christian so I was surprised at how traditionally Protestant the language was and that there were no references to other theologies in making any of the points. Unitarian Universalism has become much more diverse than our Protestant roots and for this message to be applicable to more congregations it would have been nice to see that diversity reflected.
I also felt some cognitive dissonance in reading about how our faith centers on “a small circle of uniformly elite, largely male, and overwhelmingly white intellectuals” and the importance of diverse voices in our congregations when a vast majority of the quoted references in the book where exactly that. It’s a bit of a practicing what we preach moment.
It is definitely not for your average lay person and reads very much like a divinity school thesis so the points about making our faith accessible to all seemed incongruous. Simpler language would have made the same points more effectively.
The UU congregation I attend is not heavily Christian so I was surprised at how traditionally Protestant the language was and that there were no references to other theologies in making any of the points. Unitarian Universalism has become much more diverse than our Protestant roots and for this message to be applicable to more congregations it would have been nice to see that diversity reflected.
I also felt some cognitive dissonance in reading about how our faith centers on “a small circle of uniformly elite, largely male, and overwhelmingly white intellectuals” and the importance of diverse voices in our congregations when a vast majority of the quoted references in the book where exactly that. It’s a bit of a practicing what we preach moment.
February 14, 2020
“After the Good News” identifies the history of liberal religion to speak of optimism, even in the presence of suffering and injustice. Repeating and putting our faith in the "the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice" is too easy. And seeing ourselves (but especially the white, economically secure intellectuals in our congregations) as created in the image of God and therefore capable of manifesting that just future gives us an “out” from doing the hard work necessary. We have faith in human-capacity, with the narrow view of which humans might be full of capacity.
Ladd describes our estrangement from ourselves, the holy, and people around us. The call beyond optimism is to bridge that gap of estrangement. It is a call to authentic relationship that decenters whiteness and looks to those affected for leadership and solution.
Charity work, parachuting in from outside the community, and forgetting to listen to those affected by injustice, perpetuates the estrangement between us. Conversely, “the power to change the world can be gained by relating with humility and grace to the actual people calling out for a more survivable world.”(p. 78). We must move from the “will to power” to the “will to mutuality.” “A conversion from fetishized sympathy to genuine acknowledgement pulls us out of the limits of our own perception and into an honest exchange of meaning.” (p. 78)
Ladd describes our estrangement from ourselves, the holy, and people around us. The call beyond optimism is to bridge that gap of estrangement. It is a call to authentic relationship that decenters whiteness and looks to those affected for leadership and solution.
Charity work, parachuting in from outside the community, and forgetting to listen to those affected by injustice, perpetuates the estrangement between us. Conversely, “the power to change the world can be gained by relating with humility and grace to the actual people calling out for a more survivable world.”(p. 78). We must move from the “will to power” to the “will to mutuality.” “A conversion from fetishized sympathy to genuine acknowledgement pulls us out of the limits of our own perception and into an honest exchange of meaning.” (p. 78)
July 7, 2019
I am grateful to have read this book, and that ministers such as Reverend Ladd pick up the mantle of righting the course of our adrift faith.
Connecting the dots between the fallen idols of liberal utopias past and the varying tugs between ports of self-assuredness and white liberal incapacity, this book reminds readers of the ways litrugy and deep spiritual reflection could potentially make Unitarian Universalism relevant to so many.
Connecting the dots between the fallen idols of liberal utopias past and the varying tugs between ports of self-assuredness and white liberal incapacity, this book reminds readers of the ways litrugy and deep spiritual reflection could potentially make Unitarian Universalism relevant to so many.
December 5, 2022
Quotable:
For those who tend the vineyards. For all those who labor in the fields of liberal idealism. For the ones who work the plows of this fertile soil. For the ones to whom blessings are not yet extended in this whole new world we are building together. For the ones who went before us, and the ones who are still waiting to be included in the dream. I light a little flame, and I am both grateful for and daunted by the work that lies ahead.
The time has come to take this liberal theology of ours, a sacred inheritance from all who came before, and submit it to the transformation that comes along with a consequential commitment. The time has come to shift away from benevolent paternalism of the sort that fundraises for and organizes rallies for the people at the margins and toward a willingness to listen and respond to the voices that have historically been cast out of the center of our utopian vision.
If this progressive dream of ours is not to die, if brown, black, queer, trans, migrant female bodies are not to be sacrificed on the alter of democracy while religious progressives hang out together and celebrate our counter-culturalism, the center needs to shift.
We tell ourselves the story of inevitable progress in part because we know that stories are powerful, world-shaping things. Our stories about history and human nature shape not only who we think we are, but who we actually are in relation to the people and the ecosystems around us. Since we are the ones who control them, but the interesting and sometimes terrifying truth in that it is nost often precisely the other way around.
The stories we tell, and the symbols and language we use to tell them, give rise to the way we understand ourselves. In some sense, we human beings cannot even know who we are in a vacuum separated from the stories we tell about the world and our place in it.
Being white, privileged, and sheltered behind the walls of progressive institutions doesn’t mean being on the wrong side of history. It doesn’t mean those in the liberal church who hold those identities are obligated to endless guilt-ridden self-flagellation about our ancestors’ place in the story, not does it mean we are called to banal and inchoate repentance for the fact that the playing field still isn’t level.
It is so much easier to perceive the building of a just society as a project of benevolent paternalism visited upon others through a divinely ordained charitable instinct than to understand how the absence of a just society kills all of us – if not by bullets, then by a thousand tiny cuts to the integrity of our own souls.
It is easy to imagine that the work of the church is to cultivate our own souls so that we might bind up what is broken among other people. It is so much harder to acknowledge what is and has always been broken within ourselves.
Perhaps the liberal church should also be a place where each of us is unashamed of the spiritual practices and touchstones we bring with us into its doors – practices gleaned from lifetimes and generations that came before.
There is no room for any variety of hope that doesn’t acknowledge despair.
Hope is different. Like faith, hope is the exact opposite of certainty. It does not presume an outcome for good or for ill. It lies in the waiting moment when the tug from both directions is not yet fully resolved and when a great many things are still possible. It moves in the humble spaces that open when we allow ourselves to be uncertain and thus not fully self-contained. It is the possibility, though not the inevitability, of a better way.
For those who tend the vineyards. For all those who labor in the fields of liberal idealism. For the ones who work the plows of this fertile soil. For the ones to whom blessings are not yet extended in this whole new world we are building together. For the ones who went before us, and the ones who are still waiting to be included in the dream. I light a little flame, and I am both grateful for and daunted by the work that lies ahead.
The time has come to take this liberal theology of ours, a sacred inheritance from all who came before, and submit it to the transformation that comes along with a consequential commitment. The time has come to shift away from benevolent paternalism of the sort that fundraises for and organizes rallies for the people at the margins and toward a willingness to listen and respond to the voices that have historically been cast out of the center of our utopian vision.
If this progressive dream of ours is not to die, if brown, black, queer, trans, migrant female bodies are not to be sacrificed on the alter of democracy while religious progressives hang out together and celebrate our counter-culturalism, the center needs to shift.
We tell ourselves the story of inevitable progress in part because we know that stories are powerful, world-shaping things. Our stories about history and human nature shape not only who we think we are, but who we actually are in relation to the people and the ecosystems around us. Since we are the ones who control them, but the interesting and sometimes terrifying truth in that it is nost often precisely the other way around.
The stories we tell, and the symbols and language we use to tell them, give rise to the way we understand ourselves. In some sense, we human beings cannot even know who we are in a vacuum separated from the stories we tell about the world and our place in it.
Being white, privileged, and sheltered behind the walls of progressive institutions doesn’t mean being on the wrong side of history. It doesn’t mean those in the liberal church who hold those identities are obligated to endless guilt-ridden self-flagellation about our ancestors’ place in the story, not does it mean we are called to banal and inchoate repentance for the fact that the playing field still isn’t level.
It is so much easier to perceive the building of a just society as a project of benevolent paternalism visited upon others through a divinely ordained charitable instinct than to understand how the absence of a just society kills all of us – if not by bullets, then by a thousand tiny cuts to the integrity of our own souls.
It is easy to imagine that the work of the church is to cultivate our own souls so that we might bind up what is broken among other people. It is so much harder to acknowledge what is and has always been broken within ourselves.
Perhaps the liberal church should also be a place where each of us is unashamed of the spiritual practices and touchstones we bring with us into its doors – practices gleaned from lifetimes and generations that came before.
There is no room for any variety of hope that doesn’t acknowledge despair.
Hope is different. Like faith, hope is the exact opposite of certainty. It does not presume an outcome for good or for ill. It lies in the waiting moment when the tug from both directions is not yet fully resolved and when a great many things are still possible. It moves in the humble spaces that open when we allow ourselves to be uncertain and thus not fully self-contained. It is the possibility, though not the inevitability, of a better way.
February 1, 2019
I was trying not to buy books for the first part of the year - but when the minister for my first UU church had a book out, I had to bend the rules and buy it immediately. Rev. Nancy was my welcome to Unitarian Universalism as a teen looking for a church home, and I'm really grateful for her deep thoughtfulness and caring, both of which carry through this book.
The UU church's conviction that "the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice" has rung a little bit shallow, and Rev. Nancy does a great job laying out how liberal religion got to this place that doesn't always know how to deal with The Bad Stuff and how we might change that. I particularly appreciated the last couple of chapters, which started to get into liturgies of atonement and lament that liberal churches might develop.
The UU church's conviction that "the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice" has rung a little bit shallow, and Rev. Nancy does a great job laying out how liberal religion got to this place that doesn't always know how to deal with The Bad Stuff and how we might change that. I particularly appreciated the last couple of chapters, which started to get into liturgies of atonement and lament that liberal churches might develop.
October 23, 2019
LOVED this book. I strongly recommend it to anyone who considers themselves part of a liberal or progressive faith, as well as to secular and religious humanists, but also to anyone doing justice work, whether in a faith-based context or not. So many of the ideas McDonald Ladd deals with are woven into progressive movements and taken for granted - she guides a reader to pick them out, name them, and assess them critically.
January 9, 2020
I thought this book spoke to what I couldn’t quite articulate as a Unitarian Universalist and as a minister. How could I preach hope, (wasn’t that what I was supposed to do?) when I didn’t feel hopeful. Thinking about despair and suffering and brokenness led me to this book and it has helped me resolve the unnamed lingering issues I too felt about thus faith and my approach to preaching it.
Beautifully written, superb theology, and yes, hope.
Beautifully written, superb theology, and yes, hope.
July 17, 2020
Although my tradition is not exactly a liberal church (parts are, but not the whole), I still found much to learn, and excellent insights in this book. Ministry is indeed, all about relationships.Well written, interspersing personal anecdotes with history and the exploits of towering figures of her tradition and hometown, Nancy McDonald Ladd knows how to weave together her case so that you can see it from multiple angles.
August 19, 2019
Mandatory reading for liberal religious theologians and religious leaders, especially Unitarian Universalist clergy. The author lays out clearly how we got here and how to go forward with authenticity and relationship.
November 2, 2020
A Must Read for Unitarian Universalists. A humbling reminder that our faith has been holding on to an overly optimistic world view that it inherited in the 19th century and still professes today. Ladd also offers rituals that have been lost form the UU liturgy for us to reclaim.
December 7, 2024
A timely look at the limits of positive, aspirational lines of progressive religious thought, and the need to get into the dirt and mud of the work that needs done.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews