Emily C. Heath, Courageous Faith: How to Rise and Resist in a Time of Fear (Pilgrim Press, 2017).

Emily C. Heath is an important voice for the mainline, progressive church. Heath (whose pronouns are they/them/their) came to progressive Christianity as an adult, having grown up nonreligious. Unlike many trendy progressives, Heath insists that renewal lies not in innovation for its own sake but in recommitting ourselves to the core of the tradition. Yet as a self-described “female-bodied, gay, gender nonconforming” person, Heath envisions a church that welcomes and embraces every person without exception, as we struggle together to be a community of life in a world too often overshadowed by the powers of death.

This book is a call to resistance against forces that dehumanize and destroy us and those we love. Yet, first and foremost, it is a call to the hard work of resurrection—of realizing our own entrapment in the tombs of death and learning to trust the God who calls us forth into new life. It is a beautiful and profound call to the authenticity of Christian life.

We Are All in Recovery

In the first half of the book, Heath describes their vision of the church in terms of recovery groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous. While not all of us are addicts in the traditional sense, Heath says, we do all have our addictions—to money, to power, to privilege, to success, to patriarchy, to racism, to homophobia, and so on. Drawing on their own experience of the Twelve Steps, Heath describes the Christian life as a process of acknowledging that we have a problem, of making amends to those we have harmed, of learning to love ourselves as we are, of extending grace and hospitality to others, of giving our testimony so that others know they are not alone.

Only when we have acknowledged that we are addicts in need of recovery, Heath urges, can we truly learn to accept the profound grace of a God who became one of us–who descended into the darkest holes of human existence to show us all the way to rise. If Christ can rise up again from the tomb, God can surely bring us out of our deathly addictions and restore us to abundant life, step by step, one day at a time.

In Heath’s vision, the church should be a community of profound welcome and acceptance. If we can each acknowledge our own need for grace, we no longer feel the need to judge others for what they have done or for what they are doing. Instead, we can embrace each other for who we are becoming, encouraging each other along the path of recovery.

In one of the most striking passages of the book, Heath writes,

What makes good churches vital is the same thing that makes recovery groups grow year after year. Going to a place where people can come and be completely honest, and then be met with nothing but belonging and love, is like falling into a river of living water.

Sign me up, please.

Recovery as the Root of Resistance

In the second half of the book, Heath develops the idea that this process of recovery—recognizing that we have been dead in sin but have been raised again into new life—becomes the basis for public resistance to the power of death in the world. Because we have been to rock bottom and have survived by the grace of God, we can find the courage to stand up against those worldly forces that act against the will of God, endangering the thriving of humankind.

Heath frames their discussion of resistance largely within the context of the German church during the rise of Nazism in the 1930’s, contrasting the resistance of the Confessing Church of Barth and Bonhoeffer with the accommodation of the official German Christian church. While one could certainly read the book as a critique of the Trump administration, it generally remains free of partisan commentary. Rather, Heath is broadly concerned about Christian resistance to any idolatry in which loyalty to country or party displaces loyalty to God’s call for love of the neighbor. The book presses each of us about our ultimate loyalties.

At its core, Heath’s book is a call to be courageous in our commitment to the God of life over and against those forces that demand our ultimate loyalty and allegiance. Importantly for me, Heath distinguishes between this courageous resistance and outright fearlessness in the face of danger. Standing up to the pharaohs of this world is scary business. Heath does not imagine that we should have no fear but instead that we should act in spite of our fear.

To describe this life of resistance, Heath tells the story of Nachson. According to Jewish legend, Nachson was the first Israelite to step into the Red Sea as the Israelites were fleeing from the Egyptians. According to the legend, the Red Sea didn’t part all at once when Moses raised his staff. Instead, it parted only one step at a time. As Nachson dared to take the next step into the watery abyss, the sea opened in front of him. One does not have the luxury of seeing the dry land open up from the shore, says Heath. We have to take the next step, even if it feels like we’re drowning.

I cannot commend this book highly enough. It has reoriented my conception of what it means to be church in ways that feel a little disorienting—but deeply, deeply true.