REVIEW: “Chasing Belief” by Wayne L. Krefting

This is a review of the book Chasing Belief: Engaging Transformative Spirituality by Wayne L. Krefting

Before sharing my thoughts on the book Chasing Belief by Wayne Krefting, I need show my hand in this review. I am credentialed pastor in a major Christian denomination, hold that Bible is the sole, infallible rule of life, doctrine, and conduct, and that because of these things approaching this book from a position of neutral in order to be as unbiased as possible in reviewing this book was pretty much impossible. This review will not contain point-by-point engagement with every single statement and stance that Krefting shares in his book, as even if I only engaged with the central claim of each chapter -ignoring the Preface and Postscript- I would still be writing on 29 chapters of content (which I do not believe one review reader, whether on my blog or on Amazon, would actually read all of). So this review will highlight the positive, redeeming qualities of it, and then I will simply address a couple foundational points from the Chasing Belief.

Krefting’s writing style deserves major kudos. I enjoyed it. His voice is personable and conversational. He approaches each chapter and its contents not from the point of an “expert” who knows all on the subject, but instead as someone who seems to have walked through in his own life what he is writing about, has worked through it in his mind, and instead is sharing his thought process in an accessible way, along the way helping the reader why he sees things the way he does, and why he thinks the reader and society would benefit from the same. In chapter 22, Krefting writing on self-emptying, writes “In this outpouring we might begin to recognize or glimpse what a highest ideal of love and compassion might be, that emptying Self/self-gains or defines fullness of Self/self” (p. 165).

What I found challenging (frustrating???) about Krefting’s project -calibrating a spirituality for our post-modern Western society- is that it begins with a focus on self as foundational, a rejection of traditional religious terminology, a rejection of any sort of standard for this “transformative spirituality.” Much of this book is built on a grounding Krefting establishes early on: “In our time of crisis of culture, of faith, of intellectual self-understanding, interpretations matter. Our ways of understanding and acting no longer work; even our experience is estranged from the past” (p. 5). I agree that Krefting is right in that interpretations are important. Where I get hung up in his argument is that because our interpretations need recalibrated, we need to evaluate it based on modernity (which is everchanging and subjective), over and against religious tradition. If 7 billion people all seek to make meaning out “Ground of Being,” this invariably leads to 7 billion different interpretations and can lead to even further societal fracturing. It seems that it is possible that our misinterpretations may be due just as much to how we are viewing modernity.

In discussing religious narratives, Krefting writes “From an intellectual perspective, the old religious paradigm and the language used to describe those religious understandings are stretched to the breaking point in relation to a scientific understanding of the cosmos, the universe around and within us” (p. 12). Religious biases aside, I feel Krefting makes a pretty shallow attempt at providing a basis for the rejection of Scripture (whether of my faith or of other ancient faiths). As I have not studied other texts such as the Quran with enough depth to know with 100 percent certainty that I am right on this, I am going to go out on a limb that it, as well as the TaNaKh, Bible, and other ancient texts, do not attempt to be scientific texts, but instead texts that speak to man and his place in the world. To that end, it would seem that the “old religious paradigm and language” might be more useful now than then, it seems that many of the problems Krefting acknowledges seem to have become more prominent at the same time that these ancient texts have been relegated to the periphery. While causation does not equal causality, it should make one wonder.

A last issue I want to discuss in this review (and again, this is not a thorough treatise on the entire book), is what a see is the hinge flaw in the work. Krefting writes that “We have come to terms explicitly with the modern world. If we are to be modern in life then our faith ought to reflect this modern life, if our faith is to have any meaning and vitality for us” (p. 20). This quote comes from chapter 3 where Krefting addresses what he calls the “modern spirit” and four characteristics of it. It would not be too much of a stretch to state that Krefting presents four doctrines of the modern spirit, instead. The hinge flaw I see is that what is presented as finding a spirituality within our modern era is really a conversion to secular modernism. This was the feeling I got throughout the book, that Chasing Belief was in fact a 220-page (including the Bibliography) evangelism tract on conversion to secularism. As I progressed through the book, I kept stopping to ask myself, “Do I feel that I am being challenged to apply my faith in new ways in a modern context, or do I feel I am being challenged to abdicate my faith all together?”

In the end, this book is not one I would recommend. Rob Bell’s What We Talk About When We Talk About God is a much more pastoral book on the topic. The back cover reads that, “It is time to create new, transformed concepts for those moral and ethical religious teachings compatible with our modern self-understanding.” What is one to do with ones not compatible with “our modern self-understanding?” The answer not-so-bluntly stated is “pitch ‘em because they are useless.” Yet, what if instead, we should be scrutinizing the values and doctrines of the modern spirit to see what is compatible with those ancient moral and ethical religious concepts? 

I received my copy of this book for free through the Speakeasy book reviewing program in exchange for reviewing it. I was not obligated to write a positive review -as is evident by the review. The opinions expressed are mine.