Cinderella Church: The Story of Early Christianity

About the Book

Christianity is the largest religion in the world with approximately 2.1 billion adherents. Nonetheless, when measured by the gold standard-early Christian teachings and practice-we find considerable slippage. Two words describe current church problems and failures: dull and devious. At the highest levels of Catholic leadership, for example, we find scandals galore. Top officials pilfer $40 million in Detroit to build national shrines, Cardinals and bishops cover up priest sexual abuse, and the pope most recently ignores high ranking bishops and cardinals' pleas to allow Catholics to use condoms to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS. That is the devious part. At the lower end of the totem pole are priests and laity that just don't get it. They say their prayers, go to mass, and have their baptisms; they wonder why their kids don't go to church any more. Not enough priests? We will close the small churches and build a mega church. One small city in Wisconsin (pop. 40,000) did this at the cost of $12 million. Care to measure the cost of celibacy? Pay, pray, and obey is the mantra and the young people don't like it. Little wonder that only 1 in 3 Christians practice their faith to any appreciable degree and fail to pass religious traditions on to the next generation. Instead of going after the lost sheep, the pope says maybe we need a small dedicated remnant of believers. Interesting strategy when you have driven the sheep away with questionable policies: no women priests, no married priests, no condoms to fight AIDS.

About the Author

After receiving his Ph. D. in sociology, John Kinkel has spent 30 years teaching and writing about religious problems. His book Chaos in the Catholic Church outlined the crisis in the Catholic church today and offered concrete solutions to its problems. He has written for scholarly journals as well as the popular press (L.A. Times, Boston Globe, and Detroit Free Press) in order to expose religious corruption and the road to church reform. His new book Cinderella Church: the Story of Early Christianity asks Christians to examine the roots of Jesus? movement as a means to personal renewal and church reorganization.