Love him or hate him, Hughes is going to make you think.

Richard Hughes is a well known scholar associated with Churches of Christ and the Restoration Movement and has written extensively on the history and nature of Churches of Christ and the Restoration Movement.

In The Grace of Troublesome Questions: Vocation, Restoration, and Race (galley received through early review program), Hughes attempts to provide a reflective memoir through selected writings over the past few years. He particularly wanted to focus on his faith journey from, according to his own estimation, naive embraces of being part of the exclusively correct religious movement in the correct nation as part of a world made for white people, toward embracing the troublesome questions and being forced to grapple with the claims of other religious movements, challenges to the election and innocence of America, and correcting his blindness toward the pervasive nature of white supremacy.

Hughes presents a lot of compelling ideas with which members of churches of Christ do well to grapple. His association of America as a land of innocence, a place in which the ugliness of the past (European, aristocratic) ways could be set aside to uphold an ideal people and government, and the Restoration Movement’s understanding of the restoration of the ancient order of things, as if 1800 years of history in-between can just be swept aside, is significant. His understanding of how the restorationist impulse manifested itself in a rational spirit and primarily directed itself in terms of church polity and governance in the Restoration Movement, but how the same impulse manifested itself in a romantic spirit in terms of experience in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and in a desire to return to Jesus and the Gospels in the Anabaptist churches has much to commend it. His grappling with white supremacy is known to those who have read his works on myths Americans live by, but are profitable for those who have yet to encounter such works.

I felt Hughes has a better handle on considering a healthier way forward for churches of Christ rather than, say, Jack Reese: just as America was not founded in some kind of naive innocence, neither can churches of Christ pretend 1900 years of history did not exist; perhaps the problem with the “restoration of the ancient order of things” is that it has not gone far enough and settled too simply for the thin gruel of church polity and governance. This is not to say we should act as if anything goes in terms of church polity and governance, but the resistance to restoring the importance of the Gospels and the centrality of Jesus is quite telling. Churches of Christ were not originally Evangelical and if their future is Evangelical they might as well not exist at all. There is a place for the restorationist impulse.

I did find this work uneven and redundant because it is a compilation of previously published materials; perhaps it is not legally possible to have edited them, but I feel the work would have been much better served by smoothing out the unevenness and redundancies in edits. I also found the hagiography surrounding Hughes in the work rather off-putting; I’m not even sure such effulgent praise is profitable when a man dies, let alone while he still lives, and I would like to think we can find ways to honor Hughes’ contributions in ways fully consistent with boasting in Christ and not in people. Nevertheless, as churches of Christ undergo quite the identity crisis, this is a good contribution for reflection and consideration.

Get Out of my Head :-)

As a PK within the Disciples of Christ (which shares its Stone/Campbell roots with the author’s Churches of Christ), this was a very interesting book with respect to how each tradition evolved to where they are today. In many respects, it filled in a lot for me (and I thought I already knew a significant part of our history). More importantly, despite the optimism found early within the movement, our theology didn’t evolve within the true spirit of Christ … in fact, the author connects many of the flaws within out theology to many of the pernicious ills within (American/Western) society … calling us to task for our tacit (and sometimes explicit) support for slavery, segregation, et. al. He does so be exploring several social myths within [White] American society that I have generally seen as well, so I was favorably receptive to most of his arguments. If you are generally unsympathetic to BLM and/or typically “stay in your lane” in your treatment of those people on the margin, this book may be a tad uncomfortable (surprise, these are troublesome questions right … and he has some particularly harsh words for evangelicals specifically). Although I was i general agreement with many of his myths, I have come to realize that I actually have not gone far enough (so yeah … it was uncomfortable for me as well).

The book is divided into five (5) sections with the first section outlining the need to re-examine restorationist theology (and how it was originally formed) and the last section a general acknowledgement of the many people that help the author “see” his truth … and actually change his own understanding of the issues (much like my own father did as a contemporary … change of self is hard and admirable). Section two examines the restorationist movement as a whole with a surprising contract to evangelical theology that I was not aware of (given how the restoration movement and evangelicals appears to have evolved toward each other, this was not that surprising). Section three hits hard and is where the cracks in the current theology fails with respect to “The Kingdom of God” … It should not be overly controversial viewing that Jesus ministered to the margins … but our ability to turn a blind eye to those people with appear theological justification is. Section four is the call to action … and is the hardest part of the whole book. While there are no specific steps to follow, it becomes clear that we are called to do something (and the author turns to the examples of the Anabaptists/Reform churches for a road map). Just understanding the national myths and systemic biases of our society is a good start (and is helpful for fostering empathy and even love), but the hard part has always been taking the next step …

<Spoiler>

Section One: Called by Troublesome Questions
- Chapter 1: The Grace of Troublesome Questions
- Chapter 2: The Apocalyptic Origins of the Churches of Christ
- Chapter 3: Two Restoration Traditions: Mormons and Churches of Christ in the Ninetieth Century

Section Two: Called by a Book - Making Sense of the Restoration Vision
- Chapter 4: Called by a Book
- Chapter 5: Restoring First Times in the Anglo-American Experience
- Chapter 6: What Restorationists Don’t Fit the Evangelical Mold

Section Three: Called by the Upside-Down Kingdom of God
- Chapter 7: How a Teacher Heard the Call of Racial Justice
- Chapter 8: The Summons from the Biblical Text
- Chapter 9: Why I Am Not an Evangelical Christian

Section Four: Called to Question - The Restoration Vision, Innocence, and Race
- Chapter 10: How a Naive and Innocent Student Discerned the Umbilical Cord That Tie His Church to His Nation - And the Nation to His Church
- Chapter 11: The Restoration Vision and the Myth of the Innocent Nation
- Chapter 12: How Slavery Still Shapes the World of White Evangelical Christians
- Chapter 13: Resisting White Supremacy
- Chapter 14: Christian Nationalism and Racial Injustice: Where Do People Faith Go From Here?
- Chapter 15: How Can We Rethink the Restoration Vision ?

Section Five: The People Who Issued the Many Calls That Shaped My Vocation
- Chapter 16: The People Who Shaped My Vocation
- Chapter 17: Finding Someone to Love
- Chapter 18: “Next Time, Send Jan”
- Chapter 19: They Believed in Me: The Grace of Good Teachers
- Chapter 20: Five Words That Made a Difference - And the Man Who Spoke Them

</Spoiler>

I was given this free advance review copy (ARC) ebook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

#TheGraceOfTroublesomeQuestions #NetGalley.