The Journey of God: Christianity in Six Movements

Pastor Lyonhart (MonoThreeism) takes a bumpy ride through six stages of “the Christian story” in this energetic if flawed retelling. Using each stage to anchor his theological, personal, and philosophical meditations, he covers creation, the fall of Adam and Eve, God building up the Jewish nation in preparation for the growth of Christianity, humanity’s redemption through Jesus, the founding of the current church, and the impending end of the world. He contends that cutting out any one of these parts would impede the moral completeness of Christian philosophy: losing sight of the sixth and final movement would render humans “materialists,” while de-emphasizing the creation narrative risks furthering a “body-shaming, sex-repellent, anti-environmental” ethos. Lyonhart’s at his most convincing when he discusses how understanding the story of Christianity in its entirety prevents ideological cherry-picking and enables a robust understanding of Christian morals, though this point tends to weave in and out of view. Additionally, the six “movements” can feel somewhat like an arbitrary structural container for wide-ranging theological musings, personal anecdotes, humorous asides, and sprawling philosophical analyses. The result is an ambitious yet uneven attempt to breathe fresh life into a familiar narrative. (June)