Confronting a Controlling God

Christianity has lost control of its brand. That matters even for nonbelievers because Christian symbolism permeates Western culture. It shapes the source code for how we think about ourselves and what we expect from one another. If God is all-controlling, then human control is divinely sanctioned. Our efforts to control one another have cosmic legitimacy--the legitimacy claimed by fundamentalists pursuing a political agenda that has nothing to do with Jesus of Nazareth. But if God is defined as compassion and loving-kindness, then Christianity calls the faithful to compassion and radical hospitality. Wallace traces the backstory of this vitally important tension all the way back to competing translations of Moses's argument with the burning bush, arguing for a ""Copernican turn"" in which the spiritual encounter with compassionate Presence lies at the heart of Christianity. Praise for earlier volumes in the Confronting Fundamentalism Series ""Catherine Wallace is a force of nature. She is brilliant, persuasive, compassionate, and wise. Her new book in the Confronting Fundamentalism series addresses the issue of gay marriage. She does so with such clarity, directness, and zest that it's hard to imagine anyone reading this book without being challenged to understand LGBTQ identity--and marriage--afresh and anew."" --Brian D. McLaren, author/speaker/activist (brianmclaren.net) ""Proclaiming Christianity that can cooperate with other religions and is understood as living the way of Jesus rather than as adherence to a theory about Jesus provides a welcome antidote to the violent God emulated by adherents of the contemporary form of Christendom, which Wallace repudiates so forcefully."" --J. Denny Weaver, author of The Nonviolent God ""This is a sensitive and well-thought-out book that explores the relationships between literature, religion, physiology, morality, prayer, science, metaphor, truth and art. If that sounds like a handful, it is. But Catherine M. Wallace handles these subjects with grace and clarity in this excellent book."" --Abby Hafer, Author, The Not-So-Intelligent Designer--Why Evolution Explains the Human Body and Intelligent Design Does Not Catherine Miles Wallace, PhD, is a cultural historian on the faculty of the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University. She is the author of For Fidelity: How Intimacy and Commitment Enrich Our Lives (1998).