Dr. Kania is a former neighbor. He was one of the more enlightened people in the small town where I grew up (a town that has a wax museum devoted to the Bible…five bucks gets you into the Museum of Christian Martyrs). I was anxious to read this book by a Mansfield native, and also because I’m curious about what he defines as “healthy religion.” Kania was a clinical psychologist, and a Christian theology professor in Texas, so he’s visited the belly of the beast and lived to tell about it.
Dr. Kania makes abundantly clear that, as soon as Jesus was executed for disrupting the status quo over 2,000 years ago, a religion grew around him that concentrated less on his teachings (love, forgiveness, compassion, understanding) and more on the supernatural and on him being the “son of God.” Awe and mystery, after all, are great tools in converting people to your cause. In other words, the messenger became more important than the message. Dr. Kania emphasizes that many so-called Christians today, especially in the U.S., have little interest in helping the less fortunate, and are more concerned with their own salvation and finding security in a select “club” (church), often suspending their reason, rationality, and intellect in the process…assuming they’re endowed with these traits to begin with.
As an agnostic who attended two fairly liberal Protestant churches and who subscribes to Christian principles, I shake my head all the time. Is there a “faith” that focuses on true spiritual growth, and on Jesus’s or someone else’s teachings, and dispenses with the club ties and the purple unicorns? Maybe. My impression, however, is that Dr. Kania is writing for those confused souls who are stuck in conservative Christianity, in the “political church,” and might be looking for escape. But most of the conservative Christians I know have been marinating in dogma and doctrine for so long, they’re too far gone to even want to seek help.
While this book is sensible and candid (any book that quotes George Carlin and Iris Dement can’t be all bad...Frank Zappa would have made it a trifecta), it also has redundancy. Dr. Kania cites a few too many writers and theologians, and overdoes the bulletized lists, which are merely rewritten with different wording. Not sure if he had an editor, but a good one would have cut this book in half. Also, he concentrates more on un-healthy than healthy. Only toward the end does he zero in on certain qualities that characterize healthy religion, and these qualities are merely generalizations on how to live a wholesome life. There's no real guide or plan. At one point, he admits that “healthy religion” might be an oxymoron. I would agree. He probably should have used the title “Healthy Spirituality,” and focused more on Eastern and aboriginal philosophies that aren’t obsessed with one judgmental, father-like being up in the clouds. But Dr. Kania has written four other books since this, his first, so maybe he covers that territory there.
A good book by a good man with a worthy goal, especially if you’re a disenchanted mainstream/orthodox/conservative Christian who is teetering on the edge of abandoning your church, and need something to push you over the edge. Otherwise, it’s probably not the “guide” it claims to be, and you might want to explore further.
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