| New Thinking for a New Millennium
After half a century as a minister for the Christian church, Reverend Robert E. Willoughby has gone into voluntary exile to protest the church's "awful silence" on many important issues. In Christian Mandates for a New Millennium--Essays of a Religious and Social Liberal, Reverend Willoughby discusses a variety of these controversial topics, including racism, homophobia, sexism, war and peace, capital punishment, Bilbical literalism, "comfortable" religion, and the dangers of televangelists and the religious right.
Willoughby makes it clear that it is a mistake to divide issues into sacred and secular, because social and political beliefs strongly affect religious belief. Willoughby's key complaint against the church is its inability to face its responsiblities to politics and society, resulting in a policy of non-inclusiveness, such as the church's stand against homosexuality,
Many of Willoughby's essays are drawn from his personal experiences, such as the time he witnessed a race riot, or the time he saw a black man shot to death by a bus driver for refusing to move to the back of the bus. Other essays are more theoretical, based on his study of history, philosophy, and religion. But even when the essays are not drawn from his own experiences, they are clearly personal statements of deeply felt beliefs and, in some cases, non-beliefs. |
