Reasons for Hope: The Faith and Future of the Friends Church

Rating:
Summary: Baptizing Revitalization, But Needs Editing
Review: We just finished analyzing this book in our meeting to understand what Punshon might have to say about the future of *our* church. The book is good as a revitalizing point, stretching and encouraging us to change and at the same time stay with the core of who we are. I appreciated all the info he shares on Friends history, especially more recent events of this past century, which are hard to find a record of. Punshon also does a very good job of explaining aspects of Friends theology. I was excited to learn that my denomination, Evangelical Friends International, one of those which this book focuses on, is actually an acessionary movement, not secessionary- it was formed from a gathering together of different churches rather than a splitting off. This is something holy.

But a more systematic theological approach to these subjects would have been helpful. A number of Punshon's theological points are not well backed up- they would only convince the choir- or meeting, as the case may be. And he really could have used a much better editor- there are large sections of the book that need to be skimmed because nothing concrete is said. The second half of the book is much better, more cohesive, with it's foci on worship, discipleship, holiness, end times, and the future. But Punshon's section on Holiness is very confusing- at some points he says that Friends are Holiness and at other points he says they are not; he says that Wesleyan Holiness, Methodist Holiness, and Friends ideas on perfection are all different, but never gets around to explaining how this is so. This section clearly demonstrates that the author assumes a large background in theology from his readers.

I still don't understand why a whole chapter is devoted to the end times, especially when Punshon states that it has never been a great focus to the Friends. As for the subtitle "Faith and Future", the book is long on faith, and short on future- to the tune of one chapter of future. A reissue of this work would be greatly benefited by more focus on possible future ideas.