01.04.07 Heretic’s Guide To A Bad Start

One of the perks of my job I love most is the amount of free books I get sent.  About once a month someone sends me a book to read and review, sometimes even write a blur about for marketing purposes or something.

Yesterday I received A Heretic’s Guide To Eternity by Spencer Burke, the founder of theooze.com - an on-line “emergent” community.

I’ve only skimmed it so far and only truly read the forward 0 by Brian McLaren.  It’s a strange little forward.  Three pages of defensiveness and disclaimers.  He parses the word heretic and defends it’s use against a not yet and very imaginary attack from who know who.

I imagine that the blogs and maybe even religious broadcasting airwaves will soon be buzzing with scandalous outrage that Spencer and Barry have used the word “heretic” in their title.  Maybe the risk they’re taking won’t be worth it, as scores of serious, concerned people try to take the logs our of the authors’ eyes, unaware that they might even have a tiny metal shaving in their own...if some people do more than react to the scandalous title and actually read this book and realize, not what’s wrong with heresy (which is obvious to almost everybody), but what’s so often wrong with religion, including “our” religion (whichever that might be).

The whole is prickly like this.  And I got the feeling at the end of it all that McLaren was saying essentially, “If you, Shaun, don’t like anything in this book you’re about to read, well, you’re a bad bad mean person who doesn’t think enough for himself.”

Pompous.  Fists gloved and ready.  A horrible tone to set at the beginning.