Book Review of No Fixed Address

No Fixed Address: faith as journey by John Bodycomb. Review by JohnHurst

The FaithDevelopment group has been wrestling with how best to encourage and develop the faith of members of the congregation. As the Uniting Church Regulations say, the Church Council is about building up the Congregation in faith and love, and it has delegated that task to the FaithDevelopment group.

But what is the faith that we share? The Uniting Church in Australia is a very broad church, and I suspect that very few of us with agree with the Nicene Creed in its entirety. The Basis of Union says: The Uniting Church acknowledges that the faith and unity of the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church are built upon the one Lord Jesus Christ ... and goes on to say more, much more. But let's just stop there and reflect.

In my discussions with people across this congregation, I am struck by how many grains of salt people have taken in their approach to faith. I recall offering a caveat to Malcolm Chamberlain when he first invited me to become an Elder (some 20plus years ago!), saying that I had my own misgivings about much of the church's doctrine. I was rather taken aback when he said (and I paraphrase) John, we all have those doubts. So when I came to read John Bodycomb's book recently, I was still taken aback that here is a minister of the Uniting Church (and an ex-Dean of Theology at that) saying much the same things that I had always felt, but was too polite (yes, too polite is the phrase I use!) to openly espouse.

Dr Bodycomb's book is in five parts:

1. Born To Dissent
2. The Falling Edifice
3. The New Age of Discovery
4. God, Humanity and Cosmos
5. The New Mystics

In the first part, he describes his background as a dissenting protestant, congenitally suspicious of dogma and dogmatists. This very much resonated with me, as I first met John when he was Director of Christian Education for the SA Congregational Union, and harboured similar thoughts. John (back in the present) talks about the old mainstream of the church, which may in twenty years [time] have neither a message nor a market.

In the second part, he takes to task the three spires of Christianity: how Jesus became a god-man, how Christianity arrogantly assumed a monopoly on truth, and how theology has failed to keep up with the times. The first of these, Jesus as a literal Son of God, has been one of the huge stumbling blocks of Christianity relationship with the other great religions of the world, to say nothing of how it has challenged the understanding of faith throughout the ages (witness John Robinson's Honest to God).