The Divine Magician, by Peter Rollins

Sometimes a book just leaves my scratching my head, wondering "What was the point of all that?"  That's how I felt about Peter Rollins's The Divine Magician: The Disappearance of Religion and the Discovery of Faith.  Not only was I left wondering what exactly Rollins was trying to accomplish, I was wondering where this guy has been to church?  Is he really drawing on his own experiences or on some stereotypical picture of church?

I'm no perfect Christian, and certainly no perfect church member, and I've never been to a perfect church, as if there is such a thing.  When people like Rollins start talking about what's wrong with "the church" or with "religion," it always seems like they get into straw man arguments that don't hold up in reality.  Rollins talks about the "snake oil claims of religious movements."  He talks about "pious professionals" in whose hands "'God' is presented as nothing less than an object that promises satisfaction and certainty."  Those professionals "hand out placebos," offer a "security blanket," and their followers rely on belief as "an emotional crutch."

To Rollins, Christianity has become "an ideological system."  Churches "create their own constellation of beliefs and practices that tell their congregants how to think and behave." His whole point is that faith in institutions and leaders is bound to disappoint, that fulfillment can't be found in ritual and dogma.  So this is news?  All my life, I have heard affirmations like the simple phrase, "Christianity is not about religion, it's relationship."  In the evangelical world in which I live, it's common knowledge that joy and wholeness and salvation are not found in a building, a pastor, a set of doctrines, or a ritual, but in a personal encounter with Jesus himself.  The reality is that oftentimes a building, a pastor, a set of doctrines, or a ritual can be instrumental in fostering such an encounter.  But Rollins wants to get rid of all of that, or at least diminish the role they play.

I don't know Rollins.  I don't know anything about him except what you can read on the book jacket or the Amazon profile.  So I don't want to pass judgment on him as a person.  All I can judge is this one book.  (And by one I mean one; I don't intend to read any more of his books.)  His writing is pretentious.  His style is that of someone fascinated with his own thoughts and caught up in his self-perceived cleverness of his own ideas.  It's the equivalent of someone who drinks only rare, organic, free trade coffee, or hard-to-find regional craft beers, and looks down on anyone who drinks grocery store coffee or national brand beers.

There, I got that off my chest.  It sounds rude, I know, but my reaction reflects the visceral offense I took to his arguments.  I love the church because I know it offers, in a very human, imperfect, distracting way, a means by which we can come to know Jesus in community.  We have screwed it up in every denomination and every generation, but the church universal is the body of Christ, and local congregations make up that body.  Rollins rejects the church in pretty much any form you see from day to day.

For all the promise of the disappearance of religion and the discovery of faith, Rollins's book was a huge disappointment.  Perhaps he unintentionally pulled a magic trick of his own.  He pulls back the curtain, tears the veil, and reveals not a revelation of a fresh approach to living as a follower of Jesus, but an empty confession of someone who's disconnected and discontented.



Thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!