Grace, Faith & Life

Robert Farrar Capon is an Episcopal priest. On page 101 he tells how a true body of believers might start a new group when a marginal church dies.

WHERE HAS THE CHURCH BEEN, AND WHAT HAS IT BECOME?
According to Robert Farrar Capon, the answers to these questions are
in many ways dispiriting. Although the church has done much good,
it has also made numerous blunders in its checkered history. Chief
among them is that it has lost its astonishment over the Good News
of the gospel – the gift of salvation we receive from Christ.

By taking readers on an illuminating ramble through the history of the
church, Capon shows how we have lost this sense of astonishment
by making Christianity into a religion that focuses on requirements and
restrictions rather than on the Good News, and by turning the church,
which should be a body of believers, into an institution that empha-
sizes its corporate functions to the detriment of its gospel message.
After exploring all the ways in which the church has mis-embodied
itself over the centuries, Capon .explains how the church today might
re-create itself. The key, according to Capon, is recovering the gift
of astonishment with which it began.

Capon is fully alert to both the tragedy and the comedy of church
history, and he covers this uneven ground with great heart and great
humor – and genuine hope for the future of the church.
ROBERT FARRAR CAPON is an Episcopal priest and the author of
many widely popular books, including The Romance of the Word;
The Mystery of Christ; Health, Money, and Love; and a trilogy on Jesus’
parables – The Parables of the Kingdom, The Parables of Grace,
and The Parables ofJudgment.

                                  ISBN O-8028-D7’91-7
Cover design by Stephanie Milanowski
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