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With familiar candour and colour, John Bodycomb excoriates church leadership for evading, and layering over with platitudes, two huge questions:
• What future for organised religion in Western societies? and (in light of this)
• What future for the so-called ‘religious professional’?
Fifty years a sociologist of religion, specialising in the ups and downs of organised religion, Bodycomb is plain-spoken and provocative. Institutional Christianity as we have known it began to decline 600 years ago, and with it a model of religious professional. We are entering a new era, in which people must still make sense of existence with some kind of meaning system – but the old ones are obsolete. The defenders of tradition, theologians, institutional power brokers and thought police will hate ‘Two Elephants’, he predicts.
“How fortunate we are when someone with John Bodycomb’s wealth of wisdom puts pen to paper to probe, analyse, critique and reflect on religion, the church and its ordained leadership. Bodycomb’s extensive background in sociology, academia, church growth and pastoral care over half a century offers rare insights and courageous suggestions at a time when both institutional Christianity and emerging spirituality need a guiding voice.”
Dr Val Webb, theologian and author
