Soul Survivor, by Philip Yancey

"The Christian ideal," wrote G. K. Chesterton, "has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried." Philip Yancey identifies with Chesterton's assessment. After much struggle he was able to come to terms with the dilemma of absolute ideals and absolute grace that suffuses the teaching of Jesus. His book is a thoughtful reflection on the faith journey of an intelligent, influential writer, who might easily have become part of the church's alumni society had it not been for his dogged quest for truth and the availability of spiritual mentors and Christian communities who helped him on his way.

When Yancy came home to the church, it was to a more creative and hospitable evangelical Protestantism than the conservative fundamentalism he had fled in pain and rebellion as a young man. "Why am I still a Christian?" he asks. "I have spent most of my life in recovery from the church." Growing up in the American South, he absorbed from his fundamentalist Baptist roots some of the worst the church had to offer. Now, gratefully, he believes that he has landed in the loving arms of God.

How does Yancey distinguish between the evangelicalism he embraces and the fundamentalism he rejected? The differences seem to be more experiential and philosophical than theological. The church of his childhood wounded him with its duplicity, judgementalism and small-mindedness. Evangelicalism has provided him with a certain freedom to question. It lacks the rigid parochialism of the church he knew. It offers community, healthy motivation inspired by the gospel and a safe place to develop as a pilgrim.