Before there was The Certainty of Uncertainty, there was another book project I’d worked on. A few years ago, I wrote a much shorter book reflecting on the overly spiritualized nature of much of contemporary Christian faith.

Cover of Religious, Not SpiritualI had been concerned that so much of contemporary Christianity was being understood both in the media and in the church as a system of securing a place in the afterlife, with little to say about the here and now. From my reading of the tradition, our faith had always been about the here and now, always involved with the material world in which we live. All of our primary teachings—Creation, Incarnation, Sacrament, Resurrection, New Creation—seemed to focus on the material, the real, the lived rather than some “pie in the sky bye-and-bye” escapist philosophy. And when the media went crazy over Harold Camping’s prediction of the Rapture in 2011, and subsequently treated the Rapture as a main point in Christian faith, I’d had enough.

I finished that manuscript in 2012, have shopped it around a little bit, revised it thanks to Steven Pinker’s help, and shopped it around a little more. Eventually, I decided to make use of CreateSpace’s self-publishing tools and publish it myself.  The book is entitled Religious, Not Spiritual: Toward a Christian Faith that Matters.

It can be ordered from CreateSpace and Amazon.com. It is also available as a Kindle eBook.