A Christian is Known
by the Dilemmas He Dares to Face
Twenty-First-Century Christianity—Dilemmas the Church Must Face or Die is Robert E. Willoughby’s challenge to Christians in these challenging times. With breakthroughs in medicine, technology, and social issues, plus tragedies that prove we’ve developed in ways we hadn’t planned for, it’s clear our world is changing. In Twenty-First-Century Christianity Willoughby asserts that the church must also evolve.
Reverend Robert Willoughby grew up in a home that cared greatly for family involvement in the church, and under the inspiring ministry of a deeply committed liberal. So Willoughby naturally grew to feel a personal commitment to both the church and social issues.
When World War II reached America after the Pearl Harbor attack by Japan, Willoughby became a conscientious objector and began to prepare for the ministry. It didn’t take long for him to realize, though, that the church wasn’t all it seemed, especially when he saw clear divisions in the church over peace and race. Willoughby’s naivete was shaken with his new awareness that the church often mirrored the culture, events, and prejudices of our society. Its patriotic fervor in wartime caused the church to cover up its biases, divisiveness, and social ineptness, and brought forth its innate conservatism, fundamentalism, and flag-waving devotion to narrow nationalism.
Willoughby became keenly aware of the racial divisions in American life, exemplified by Detroit’s racial lines, attitudes, and riots. Except for a few liberal clergymen, including his own minister, little came forth from the American pulpits regarding racial prejudice. As time passed Willoughby studied for the ministry and became aware of the church’s complicity with the sexist and anti-Semetic attitudes that pervaded American society.
In the church’s stance against homosexuals, Willoughby saw that both civil and human rights were at stake. With the realization that two of his five children are gay came a more acute awareness of the homophobia in both church and society. He determined that this attitude must be changed to enable the church to once again be the truly inclusive church of Jesus.
According to Willoughby, most believers still see God as a “supernatural Santa” who sees when we are naughty or nice and punishes and rewards accordingly, or a supreme being who lives in the sky and can enter our realm to come to our aid, especially on our side at wartime. This is a theology that believes in heaven and hell as places in a three-tiered universe. It’s a system that brings comfort to many, but guilt, fear, and anguish to others. This is a theological system filled with lies, erroneous thinking, and ignorance—the main reasons for the demise of the church.
Willoughby’s response to these realizations was to go into exile from the established church until he found evidence of a creative and courageous effort to alter the course of its antiquated and ill-defined positions, both theological and social. Twenty-First-Century Christianity is Robert E. Willoughby’s effort to share his convictions in the hope that seeds of new thinking will be planted in others.
 Robert E. Willoughby was educated at Duke and Yale Universities. He was a minister and a teacher in Detroit, as well as a liberal, social, and political activist. He now lives and writes in Lakeland, Florida
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