Philip Gulley.
‘I believe God will save every person’
Chuck Fager reveals the trials and tribulations of an American pastor who has embraced ‘universalism’
If The Church Were Christian by Philip Gulley, HarperOne, ISBN 978 006 169 8767. £14.98. Indiana Quaker pastor and author Philip Gulley has been shaking the foundations of midwestern US Quakerism for almost ten years. This book could produce another much needed shaking there. In the 1990s Philip Gulley published a popular series of Front Porch Tales, books of often humorous stories loosely based on his experiences with church Quakers in and around his Indiana Friends Meeting. Then in 2002, Gulley co-authored a book called, If Grace Is True. In it, he announced that he had abandoned not Christianity, but his conventional heaven-hell theology, in favour of a universalist view that ‘God will save every person’.
His years of pastoral work forced the change. Gulley met too many people who didn’t fit traditional categories: flawed but struggling persons who died before they had ‘accepted Christ’; law-abiding, contented homosexuals; undeniably good people who followed other religions, or none. Something had to give: for Gulley, it was the old, hell-bent theology.
Gulley still believes in Jesus, his death and resurrection. But in place of the traditional judgment-and-condemnation theology, he now hews to universalism, summed up in the book’s motto: ‘I believe God will save every person’. He is convinced this was Jesus’ true message, the real ‘good news’ of the Gospel.
Such ‘universalist’ theology is not actually new, as Gulley acknowledges. But in the world of American evangelicalism, and particularly its pastoral Quaker wing, such notions were considered heretical and dangerous by many, and those who uttered them are not to be tolerated.
The conservative publisher of Gulley’s ‘Front Porch’ books dropped him as soon as they heard about ‘Grace’. Reviews in evangelical journals ranged from critical to scathing. And Gulley’s books suddenly disappeared from book tables at many pastoral Friends’ gatherings.
Despite the controversy, Gulley remained popular with his home congregation. But a group of pastors and others in his Yearly Meeting demanded that Gulley be stripped of his ministerial credentials.
Many other Indiana Friends, though, were either tolerant of Gulley’s views, or at least opposed to doctrinal purges. In 2007, when the stripping proposal came to the floor, objections were so vigorous that the clerk finally returned it to committee. This left the matter unresolved.
The ‘defrocking’ proposal came forward again this past summer. A fierce debate reportedly went on for four hours. At the end, the clerk declared that as there was no unity with the proposal, it was not adopted, and that was to be the end of the matter.
Well, maybe it’s the end, and maybe not. With If The Church Were Christian Philip Gulley turns his attention away from what happens after death, to the very concrete life of many churches he has attended, worked in, and studied, mainly pastoral Quaker meetings.
Overall, as Philip Gulley shows, the midwestern pastoral wing of US Quakerism is in sad shape: calls for revival and renewal are made regularly, yet membership has been declining while internal conflicts have abounded, in a reinforcing cycle. Further, the constituency has been widely influenced by the religious Right, which has only made its plight worse. A hardening of attitudes on dogma, a strident, often obsessive opposition to homosexuality and other social issues, not to mention support for the recent US wars – all this has only served to help empty the benches.
Philip Gulley takes sure aim at all this in his new book. He recounts dozens of anecdotes illustrating the corrosive effects of dogmatism, power-seeking, and exclusionary attitudes. But perhaps even more challenging is his contention that none of this institution-centred stuff has much if anything to do with Jesus, what he taught or how he lived.
Yet if Philip Gulley’s aim is true, his ammunition is unfailingly gentle, the style of rebuke consistently mild, even good-natured, more questioning than accusing. The spirit of the Front Porch Tales reigns in these pages and this may be its greatest virtue.
After all, there is little new theology here, as Philip Gulley would be the first to acknowledge. And pointing out the failings of Christian churches is as old as Paul’s epistles.
What’s his alternative? In sum: ‘Time and again, I have observed the irresistible nature of generous churches. In a world where stingy, narrow religions abound, a big-hearted fellowship has a real allure, especially to persons who’ve been bruised by bad religion, which is to say, all of us.’
‘Generous churches’. This phrase is also the key to the potential impact of Philip Gulley’s new book. If the decline of pastoral Quakerism in the US is to be reversed, it will be on the basis of a shift toward the ‘big-hearted, generous’ outlook Philip Gulley describes, and has found in a few promising places. If there is a constituency in these churches and Meetings that is ready, this book could have a broad, catalytic impact. Let’s hope it happens.
Maybe what Philip Gulley is after is more a matter of temperament than theology. But it also sounds a lot more like Jesus to me.
