“To save the church,” Robin Meyers declares in his 2015 book, Spiritual Defiance, “we must become radical truth-tellers again. […] We must believe again that we are leaven in the loaf, not peddlers of implausible doctrines. We must become again a ‘peculiar people,’ fearlessly captivated by an alternative ethic. Our task,” in short, “is that of a spiritual insurgency.”
In publishing this book, Yale University Press gets right its take on the author: “During his 30-year career as a parish minister and professor, Robin Meyers has focused on renewing the church as an instrument of social change and personal transformation.” For most all of his clerical labours, Meyers ministered at Mayflower Congregational Church in Oklahoma City—he and his congregation were featured in the 2019 documentary, “American Heretics.” As well, he holds a tenured professorship in social justice at Oklahoma City University.
“There has always been a bold flare to Meyers’ assessments of Christian churches and the culture at large,” Spirituality & Practice affirms in its critique. In this prophetic work…he describes faith as resistance to ego, orthodoxy, and empire.” Publishers Weekly says so, too, describing the work as an “explosive call to religious progressives to resist cultural and economic injustice.”
Spiritual Defiance: Building a Beloved Community of Resistance
By Robin Meyers
Yale University Press, 2015
