Rating: 
Summary: Jesus, the Great Example, preaches a Cool Hand Luke "gospel"
Review: Although Richard Rohr isn't one of the members of the Jesus Seminar, his book clearly fits into its canon, whose opuses belong to the "How to create your very own Jesus" genre. Rohr's expositions of Jesus, Scripture, gospel and salvation share many of the Jesus Seminar's semantically nuanced, but day-versus-night departures from classic, orthodox Christology and Biblical exegesis.
At its heart, Rohr's book is primarily social gospel with a generous sprinkling of sociopolitical commentary (Hint: He's no fan of conservatives, whom he characterizes generally as top-dwellers wanting to preserve a status quo "invariably built on those bottom lines of money, power, and God-talk."[p. 54]) The book's most basic tenets are a mix of Eastern religions and Jesus Seminar deconstructionism. In his book, Rohr cites the works of two Jesus Seminarians: John Dominic Crossan, whose "accurate picture of Jesus' culture" (in The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant) he praises while distancing himself from Crossan's conclusions; and Marcus Borg, whose Jesus: A New Vision he describes as a "wonderful book." [p. 119] Anticipating flak for promulgating his "richer understanding" of the gospel, Rohr tries in his book's introduction to launch a pre-emptive strike against "fundamentalism," which "refuses to listen to what the Gospel authors are really saying to their communities." [p. viii] What if fundamentalists listened? Well, they'd understand that "one of the problems in reading the Bible is that most of us Christians perceive Jesus as `the divine savior of our divine Church,' which . . . predisposition does not open us to enlightenment by Christ, but in fact, deadens and numbs our perceptions. . . [For unenlightened Christians like this reviewer] He's [Jesus] God of our saved Church, which means that our Church - and we -- are right. If we are honest enough to admit that bias, we may have a chance of letting go of it for a richer understanding of the gospel."[p. viii] Rohr's subjective departures from Christian orthodoxy, like the Jesus Seminar's, fall primarily into deconstructing the dating and inerrancy of Scripture (notably the Gospel of John); concocting a different, un-deified Jesus, whose death on the cross becomes an inspiring example to us, not a substitionary sacrifice for our sins; and postmodernizing salvation/conversion into the "Cool Hand Luke" theological equivalent of "getting your mind right." Rohr's book ultimately preaches a "different" Jesus, a "different" view of the Bible, and a "different" gospel, against which the Apostle Paul inveighed in his letter to the Galatians. I don't have Rohr's guts, frankly. I couldn't write what he wrote without living in perpetual fear of the warning to Bible revisionists in Revelation 22:18-19.
Rating: 
Summary: Sister Mary, he's not!
Review: Fr. Rohr is not your Sister Mary from 4th Grade Catechism class. He challenges you with some soul-searching concepts that will mature your relationship with the Lord. Not for the faint-hearted. G.D.
Rating: 
Summary: What was Jesus really saying?
Review: Fundamentalists like the last reviewer may not like the fact that Jesus was as much a social as a spiritual revolutionary, but Rohr forces the reader to confront this fact. It is truly bizarre that so many modern day conservatives proclaim Jesus as "Savior" while discounting or ignoring almost everything he ever said. The Sermon on the Mount is a political and spiritual discourse that undercuts almost everything that right wing Evangelicals and Catholics stand for; todays "conservative Christian" was yesterday's Pharisee.
Rohr is a gifted teacher who knows how to get at the heart of Christ's teaching. The last time I checked he was not a member of the Jesus Seminar, but was a member and leader of several congregations that were devoted to taking Jesus at his word and living out his truth in thought and deed. As Rohr himself has pointed out, Jesus was murdered for his teaching, and anyone who dares to take up His cross and pass that teaching on will be slandered and opposed at every turn. If you just talk about being "born again" (like the current president) people will think of you as a nice religious person; if you dare to preach what Jesus actually preached you we be attacked as a "liberal". I am a teacher and preacher and have found Rohr's work to be invaluable in putting together sermons and lessons. It is unfortunate that this sort of serious Bible teaching is not as widely available in Christian bookstores and over the airwaves as is the cultic nonsense of Tim LaHaye and Pat Robertson.
Rating:
Summary: Jesus as avatar
Review: Having just read an editorial entitled "Itching ears: Making a 'real' Jesus to fit the present times" by Andree Seu in the October 23 issue of WORLD magazine, I couldn't help marveling at how quintessentially accurate a review of Richard Rohr's book Ms. Seu's column is. The two paragraphs that portray the theological crux of Rohr's book most succinctly are these:
"[Judged by the standards of modernist scriptural scholarship] Spirituality is good; religion is bad. Seeking is good; finding is bad. Meditation is good; prayer is bad. Feeling is good; doctrine is bad. Monks are good; ministers are bad. Gregorian Chant is good; the Trinity Hymnal is bad. Ancient Greece is good; ancient Israel is bad. An inner "kingdom of God" is good; an eschatological "kingdom of God" is bad. The Gospel of Thomas is good; the Gospel of Luke is bad. [As a previous reviewer noted, in Rohr's case, it's the Gospel of John that's bad.] Medieval mystic Hildegard is good; John Calvin is bad. God our mother is good; God our father is bad. Jesus as avatar is good; Jesus as savior is bad. . .
"A stripped-down, Buddha-like Jesus is just the Jesus for our times. He is serene to the point of lobotomized. He makes no demands, brings no conviction of sin, is a hollowed-out vessel to be filled with what America's itching ears long to hear. In the beginning God created man in His own image, and ever since, man has been returning the favor. Heaven help this generation when it learns, too late, that the Christ it had bereft of an eschatological mission returns in all His eschatological glory on the clouds with the shout of an archangel and an uplifted sword."
If Jesus' words are to be believed, we truly need a Savior, not the "Jesus"-as-avatar counterfeit of the Jesus Seminar postmodernists. We need transformational regeneration, not rhetorical inspiration. The Bible, not any author's book or Amazon.com reviewer's commentary, is the place to find the real Jesus. Don't settle for pallid substitutes.
Rating:
Summary: A much needed antidote for irrelevant religion!
Review: I am reading this book for the third time. Thus, it pains me to read the one-star reviews below. These prove the points that Richard makes in this book: "The human need for clarity and certitude leads fundamentalists to use sacred writings in a mechanical, closed-ended and authoritarian manner. This invariably leaves them trapped in their own cultural moment in history, and they often totally miss the real message along with the deepest challenges and consolations of Scripture." And, "Unless you're willing to let go of your self-created ego worlds, you will not see the Kingdom in your midst. The ego, by nature, is conservative. It strives to conserve, to maintain itself. That translates into seeking a comfort zone to live within and staying there. Once we find that place where we feel secure, we may do [and say] anything to maintain it!" Rohr is a much-needed voice, one that counters the suffocating, and spiritless/heartless religious atmosphere that prevails in this country. This book offers fresh, clean, invigorating air; it will spur you on!
Rating:
Summary: Demystifying "Jesus' Plan for a New World"
Review: I know that as soon as I disagree with anything Father Richard Rohr (or his co-author John Bookser Feister) teaches that I am likely to be quickly dismissed or labeled as a close-minded Fundamentalist who "refuses to listen to what the Gospel authors are `REALLY' saying to their communities
With that said, there is "truth" to be found in the book, Jesus' Plan for a New World (Order), but that can also be said of the works of some of human history's worst oppressors. Richard Rohr is a skilled artist, brilliant in his command of language, powerful in his use of half-truths; therein lays the danger.
There is no denying that terrible atrocities have occurred in the name of Christianity, mistakenly justified by the abuse of Scripture. People have used and misused religious texts for millennia to justify their particular agendas, or so that they may more fully live into their personal bias. Rohr uses his mastery of language to confound the reader, hide his underlying message, shifting one away from the core of Jesus' teachings. Did Jesus tell us (his disciples and followers throughout human history) to stand on the side of the poor, the oppressed and the marginalized? Absolutely! Is Jesus asking us to hate oppression? Yes! But the Scriptures are so much richer than this. The Bible, as clearly stated in the introduction to this book "is the most controversial book in print."
At the very core of Jesus' teachings is the love of God and love for each other (all of humanity - including the "oppressed/ marginalized" as well as the "oppressors"); Rohr skillfully and very subtly shifts this core to loving the poor and oppressed and hating the oppressors vis a vis the "system" of big business, the "West," "patriarchal Christianity," etc. Rohr is neither the first nor the last person attempting to mold Jesus into a "new age" vision to align with his own political ideology. Between the lines of his text, Rohr seems to be suggesting that an idyllic socialism, first espoused by Babeuf and Owens, later repurposed by Engels, Marx, Stalin, Lenin, and so on is at the base of Jesus' plan for a new world order (i.e. `redistribution of wealth,' `government seizure of private property,' `blocked access to press,' and so on with undeniable horrific consequences to those who were oppressed within those systems - greater numbers of people were silenced and killed by socialist regimes than in the Holocaust of Nazi Germany).
Rohr uses slight nuances in language to distance himself from being labeled a "communist." I do agree with Rohr that Jesus cannot (and should not) be called a patriot (pg. 140), neither should he be called a communist. He uses much the same approach to distance himself from the teachings of the Jesus Seminar (i.e. John Dominic Crossan, Marcus Borg - both quoted in his book).
Another dangerous aspect of Rohr's teaching through this book is that there is no REALLY REAL basis for understanding good and evil, no moral ground upon which to stand, other than viewing the world through the "bias" of the "poor and oppressed," which begs the question; who ARE the poor and oppressed if, as Richard Rohr says that "the utter truth of this world....is nonetheless an acceptance that EVERYTHING except God is relative and is passing away?" (pg. 27) How do we differentiate between the truly oppressed in a system and the oppressors? How do we account for the absence of moral clarity in such a Jesus as Rohr proposes? Now please do not misunderstand me, I am not condemning anyone, but I (as do we all) have the responsibility to differentiate between good and evil, right and wrong. This is not to propose a "strictly close-minded uninformed black and white" view of the world, there is certainly a divine complexity in God's created universe beyond that which we can see, what we may call chaos or hidden order. Chaos is formed out of simple rules. Christian chaos is formed by Jesus' simple rule to love God and love our neighbors (all of humanity) as ourselves.
If you are looking for a book that gives you an understanding of why it is important to focus on Jesus rather than religion for religion's sake, I would recommend the book, More Jesus, Less Religion: Moving from Rules to Relationship by Stephen Arterburn and Jack Felton.
Rating:
Summary: The upside-down kingdom
Review: I've read a lot of Rohr's books, but somehow I've only now gotten around to this one. Immersing myself in it was like jumping into an icy mountain pond: stunning, bracing, invigorating, renewing. It's a courageous book that dares to challenge "religious culture," that institutionalization of Christ's gospel that renders it meek and mild and safe, and to persuasively defend instead the original subversive character of Christ's life and teaching. Jesus, according to Rohr, was much more of a threat to the social and moral status quo than he's usually reckoned to be. In challenging the cultures of money, power, and religionism, he offered a radically counter-cultural model of right relationship that he called "God's Kingdom." This Kingdom grows not by the sword or by power (that would be to fall into the trap the prevailing cultures), but by love and powerlessness. It subverts the established order by simply ignoring it and building the shell of the new within the old. That's one of the reasons Jesus so favored the poor, the marginalized, and disenfranchised: because they fell outside the "system," they hadn't been corrupted by it and were capable of working with God to build the Kingdom. Richard Rohr's reminder of God's great vision of justice, peace, and fulfillment, a vision preached and died for by Jesus, is a challenge to all of us who call ourselves Christians but have fallen into the habit of "loving Jesus" without acting accordingly. Highly recommended as a tonic to laypersons and clergy alike. Would that Christians would take its message to heart. Then the world might once again marvel at "how these Christians love!"
Rating:
Summary: The upside-down kingdom
Review: I've read a lot of Rohr's books, but somehow I've only now gotten around to this one. Immersing myself in it was like jumping into an icy mountain pond: stunning, bracing, invigorating, renewing. It's a courageous book that dares to challenge "religious culture," that institutionalization of Christ's gospel that renders it meek and mild and safe, and to persuasively defend instead the original subversive character of Christ's life and teaching. Jesus, according to Rohr, was much more of a threat to the social and moral status quo than he's usually reckoned to be. In challenging the cultures of money, power, and religionism, he offered a radically counter-cultural model of right relationship that he called "God's Kingdom." This Kingdom grows not by the sword or by power (that would be to fall into the trap the prevailing cultures), but by love and powerlessness. It subverts the established order by simply ignoring it and building the shell of the new within the old. That's one of the reasons Jesus so favored the poor, the marginalized, and disenfranchised: because they fell outside the "system," they hadn't been corrupted by it and were capable of working with God to build the Kingdom. Richard Rohr's reminder of God's great vision of justice, peace, and fulfillment, a vision preached and died for by Jesus, is a challenge to all of us who call ourselves Christians but have fallen into the habit of "loving Jesus" without acting accordingly. Highly recommended as a tonic to laypersons and clergy alike. Would that Christians would take its message to heart. Then the world might once again marvel at "how these Christians love!"
Rating:
Summary: Rohr's spurious "Jesus" couldn't save anyone
Review: In Acts 16:30, the Philippian jailer asked life's most critical question: "What must I do to be saved?" Richard Rohr's work of fiction would give him an unbiblical answer. Like the Jesus Seminar, Rohr has created an untrustworthy Bible, a deity-challenged Jesus, and an unscriptural means of salvation. In Rohr's warmed-over Gnosticism, the Bible is really more man's creation, not God's inspired, inerrant, and wholly Holy Spirit-authored Word. Rohr writes, "Almost none of John's Gospel is considered by mainstream scholars to be directly from Jesus. Most of what Jesus says in John's Gospel are words put in Jesus' mouth by this [early Church] community . It is not corroborated by other Gospels or writings, to our knowledge. . . the Gospels contradict one another. . . . Put yourself in the sandals of an apostle . . .you've got to make this Jesus fit the crowd, so you embroider the words a little" (pp. 47-48). Predictably, the "Jesus" in Rohr's whimsical "Bible" is not the God-Man He claimed to be, but more a "lay teacher and holy man. . . a mystic philosopher" (p. 46). Jesus is recreated by Rohr to become our "mediating symbol, [who stands] between us and God. . . Jesus is in effect our Great Patron who stands between us and God. He tells us we can trust God because God is LIKE [emphasis mine] him" (p. 63). Rohr's "gospel" is similar revisionism. Orthodox (read Biblical) Christianity had always held that salvation means that one admits he's a sinner in need of salvation, confesses and repents of his sins, believes (through Holy Spirit-given faith) that Jesus is the eternal, uncreated Son of God whose death and resurrection are the only substitutionary sacrifice for his sins, and receives Jesus as Savior and Lord. Rohr's "gospel" proclaims, "God is available as free gift and not through sacrificing another. God needs no victims and creates no victims" (p. 5). In Rohr's revision of scripture, Jesus doesn't go voluntarily to the cross as a divine, substutionary sacrifice for sins. Rohr opines, "One of the major weaknesses of the Christian understanding of Jesus is that we really do not understand what it was that made Jesus worth killing. It was not because he walked around saying, 'I am God.' . . . His religious culture is finally what gets him killed, for he is living in a religious culture" (pp. 20, 28). That would have been news to Jesus, who said, "I lay down My [own] life--to take it back again. No one takes it away from Me. On the contrary, I lay it down voluntarily. [I put it from Myself.] I am authorized and have power to lay it down (to resign it) and I am authorized and have power to take it back again" (John 10:17-18, AMPL). The Jesus quoted above is also the Jesus who said, ". . .if you do not believe that I am He [Whom I claim to be--if you do not adhere to, trust in, and rely on Me], you will die in your sins" (John 8:24, AMPL). People who invent their own Jesus, their own Bible, and their own means of salvation are playing with fire. Indeed, they're courting fire.
Rating:
Summary: Rohr's spurious "Jesus" couldn't save anyone
Review: In Acts 16:30, the Philippian jailer asked life's most critical question: "What must I do to be saved?" Richard Rohr's work of fiction would give him an unbiblical answer. Like the Jesus Seminar, Rohr has created an untrustworthy Bible, a deity-challenged Jesus, and an unscriptural means of salvation. In Rohr's warmed-over Gnosticism, the Bible is really more man's creation, not God's inspired, inerrant, and wholly Holy Spirit-authored Word. Rohr writes, "Almost none of John's Gospel is considered by mainstream scholars to be directly from Jesus. Most of what Jesus says in John's Gospel are words put in Jesus' mouth by this [early Church] community . It is not corroborated by other Gospels or writings, to our knowledge. . . the Gospels contradict one another. . . . Put yourself in the sandals of an apostle . . .you've got to make this Jesus fit the crowd, so you embroider the words a little" (pp. 47-48). Predictably, the "Jesus" in Rohr's whimsical "Bible" is not the God-Man He claimed to be, but more a "lay teacher and holy man. . . a mystic philosopher" (p. 46). Jesus is recreated by Rohr to become our "mediating symbol, [who stands] between us and God. . . Jesus is in effect our Great Patron who stands between us and God. He tells us we can trust God because God is LIKE [emphasis mine] him" (p. 63). Rohr's "gospel" is similar revisionism. Orthodox (read Biblical) Christianity had always held that salvation means that one admits he's a sinner in need of salvation, confesses and repents of his sins, believes (through Holy Spirit-given faith) that Jesus is the eternal, uncreated Son of God whose death and resurrection are the only substitutionary sacrifice for his sins, and receives Jesus as Savior and Lord. Rohr's "gospel" proclaims, "God is available as free gift and not through sacrificing another. God needs no victims and creates no victims" (p. 5). In Rohr's revision of scripture, Jesus doesn't go voluntarily to the cross as a divine, substutionary sacrifice for sins. Rohr opines, "One of the major weaknesses of the Christian understanding of Jesus is that we really do not understand what it was that made Jesus worth killing. It was not because he walked around saying, 'I am God.' . . . His religious culture is finally what gets him killed, for he is living in a religious culture" (pp. 20, 28). That would have been news to Jesus, who said, "I lay down My [own] life--to take it back again. No one takes it away from Me. On the contrary, I lay it down voluntarily. [I put it from Myself.] I am authorized and have power to lay it down (to resign it) and I am authorized and have power to take it back again" (John 10:17-18, AMPL). The Jesus quoted above is also the Jesus who said, ". . .if you do not believe that I am He [Whom I claim to be--if you do not adhere to, trust in, and rely on Me], you will die in your sins" (John 8:24, AMPL). People who invent their own Jesus, their own Bible, and their own means of salvation are playing with fire. Indeed, they're courting fire.
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