Robin Meyers is senior minister of Mayflower Congregational UCC Church, Oklahoma City, and professor of social justice in the Philosophy Department, Oklahoma City University. He is a peace activist and the author of six other books including The Underground Church: Reclaiming the Subversive way of Jesus. He writes:
"Countless churches now resemble museums, whose curators are aging and cranky souls clutching old cups of coffee and blaming the death of Old First Church on anything and everything except the walking dead themselves. Like Elvis, the Holy Spirit has left the building."
There has always been a bold flare to Meyers' assessments of the Christian churches and the culture at large. In this prophetic work based on his Lyman Beecher Lectures at Yale University, he describes Faith as Resistance to Ego, to Orthodoxy, and to Empire. At its core, Spiritual Defiance is a call to the recovery of the Beloved Community where believers stop taking themselves so seriously, where the faithful let go of the handcuffs of rigid and judgmental beliefs, and where the sons and daughters of God shuck their allegiance to the powers that be or the dominant culture.
Meyers covers a lot of territory with commentary on three major personality styles of contemporary ministers; three insightful poems by Anna Kamienska; why the behavior of believers is emptying out churches; a meditation on the dark side of religion; conformity as spiritual plagiarism; and death, taxes and lampooning the Empire. The author closes with a piece on "Resisting the Reign of the Christian Status Quo."
