Faith Beyond Belief by Margaret Placentra Johnston

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Readers will enjoy the comprehensive book club package available at Additionally, Johnston invites readers to send her their own stories of faith lost and found for potential publication on her Patheos blog.įor more information or to request a copy for review, contact publisher Quest Books. They may even have returned to their original church, but now with the more evolved traits of humility, forgiveness, gratitude, acceptance and a unitive worldview in which religious differences are seen as mere details. Some of these accounts are by nonbelievers others are by those among the growing numbers of the “spiritual but not religious.” Her second set of stories are of people at what she calls the “mystic” level who can tolerate paradox, see truth and reality as multidimensional and view spiritual concepts metaphorically. She then illustrates the process through ten real-life stories, bringing each stage to life. In the book, Johnston correlates the work of 14 spiritual development theorists into a common thread, defining the spiritual journey as a growth process with several progressive stages. It will help doubters as well as those who are struggling to clarify their own spiritual vision to see things in a new light. Faith Beyond Belief points beyond the atheist/believer controversy wrecking such divisive havoc in our culture today.

Now she offers to correct blurred misconceptions on another level. An optometrist, Johnston has made a career of helping people with their eyesight. “This is not a book against religion… It’s an invitation to consider a broader perspective,” author Margaret Placentra Johnston explains.

Faith Beyond Belief: Stories of Good People Who Left Their Church Behind challenges this attitude by giving a much-needed voice to the “good” people who have left their church but whose spirituality continues to mature. Insulated Christians rank atheists below criminals on their moral scale. While over half of Americans claim to be Christian, the number of the unaffiliated has increased from 14 million in 1990 to 34 million in 2008.

Faith Beyond Belief by Margaret Placentra Johnston