NCLA Review - Lately several books have chronicled an author’s “throwing off the shackles” of fundamentalist Christianity’s focus on doctrine and replacing it with an emphasis on Jesus’ words and actions. Reece takes us into new territory by tracing fear-laced conservative religious beliefs to the “ascetic, life-negating principles” of the Puritans and their fellow travelers. His foray into history exposed him to the philosophy of such early American thinkers as Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, and others who, in contrast, affirmed and celebrated life. Wedding their pragmatic writings with “something old” (the Gospel of Thomas) and “something new,” (the current regard for the environment) he arrived at what he calls “an American gospel.” He leads the reader down interesting paths, but I found myself skipping through the extensive quotes of his assorted guides. I hesitate to recommend this for any but a quite theologically liberal church library. Rating: 2 —DKW ( )

The Sad Story of an Anti-Conversion

American Gospel: On Family, History, and the Kingdom of God (New York: Riverside Books, 2009) is a well-written, but very sad story of an “anti-conversion.” It is the personal account of Erik Reece’s quest to find an explanation for the existence of evil and, failing to do so, his escape from reality into a religion of his own creation, which he calls the “American Gospel.”

When Erik Reece turned thirty-three, his life began to unravel. His father, who suffered from bipolar disorder, committed suicide at thirty-three. Jesus Christ was crucified when he was thirty-three. Since Erik’s father was a Southern Baptist preacher, as was his father before him, Erik felt there was a relationship between his father’s tragic death and his father’s Christian faith. If Christianity was what it claimed to be, Reece reasoned, then why was it not sufficient to provide his father with a reason to live? Was it possible that it was the teachings of the Christian “religion” as found in the institutional churches that drove his father to take his own life? Was the Christian faith, as Erik Reece knew it, a false gospel? And if it was, then where might he find a religious faith or spiritual experience that could provide for him what Christianity could not provide for his father — that is, a reason to live?

Erik Reece found his answers in the American Gospel. It is a patchwork religious philosophy made up of elements Reece gleaned from Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, William James, John Dewey, more than just a little Zen Buddhism for flavor, and the so-called Gospel of Thomas. The last is a Gnostic document employed by Reece to judge the authenticity of the four Gospels in the New Testament.

The American Gospel as constructed by Reece bears no meaningful resemblance to historic Christianity. It has much in common with Enlightenment Deism. There is, so Reece seems to imply, a creator of some sort who created what matter exists, but that is all. He, she, or it is not currently involved in that creation. There was no Fall, hence no original sin and no need for a savior, or as Reece bluntly states it: “There never was a Fall, and therefore, we do not need to be saved by a sacrificial martyr” [emphasis in the original]. The Savior who is the centerpiece of the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, was only “a Mediterranean street preacher named Yeshua, or Jesus . . .” The American Gospel calls upon its followers to accept the world as it is, to seek to be at peace with it and with oneself, neither of which is fallen. Here we can detect a bit of Zen Buddhism.

By the time we have finished reading this admittedly well-written personal testimony of Erik Reece’s pilgrimage away from Christian faith, which this reviewer would argue he never possessed, to a “new” religion that is actually a synthesis of age-old heresies, I feel sad for Reece. His father’s death was tragic, but it was caused by a medical condition that is treatable today, not by a failure to find the answer to his bipolar illness (manic depression) in his Christian faith. Reece’s father died secure in a hope that was unseen, but certain. His son, Erik, has put his faith in a philosophical religion of his own creation. He is, therefore, without hope. And that, I submit, is truly sad.
- Paul R. Waibel ( )