Rants to Revelations: a review

I hadn't taken in when I got this for review, that it is written by a 'Unity' minister; a term I was not familiar with. The Author Ogun Holder, we discover through reading the chapters of the book, was brought up a fairly traditional conservative Christian in the Carribean and later moved to the USA and following something of a crisis of faith (though not the kind that typically goes under that label) found himself in a Unity church. As we read the book, those who haven't ever encountered 'Unity' churches or people discover that it is a New Thought movement expression, so an essentially monist philosophy with a penchant for the actualisation of thought into reality -which is a way of thinking that tends to inform Prosperity teaching, and indeed one of the chapters deals with that facet of the teaching.

However, it would be very unfair to let you think that Prosperity teaching and monism as usually understood in Christian circles characterises well the writing in this book. I have had some of my preconceptions disarmed and have come to an appreciation through Ogun's writing that many 'put downs' of this kind of thought are just too simplistic: there are people who inhabit this kind of thought-world who do so with nuance, understanding of the hard realities and pastoral grace. In addition, it seems to me that in nuancing and grappling with hard realities, Ogun shows that sometimes we come closer to one another's ways of thinking than the set-piece standard positioning might have us think.

I enjoyed the style this is written in. It's down to earth and conversational and a kind of theological reflection on aspects of life. So there's an often-witty telling of an incident and then an unpacking of what this might mean and the implications and 'theology' that might help understand it helpfully. You almost don't notice that there's some really good quality thinking going on at the back of it all! Each chapter is a different incident, so rather than being a long argument, this is a series of cameos which makes it easy to read in short chunks.

Two things were particularly interesting, for me. One was the prosperity thing and the other was the personhood of God in a monistic view. The chapter on the manifesting of ones desire which is also called in the Unity Movement 'prosperity' is written with some very interesting caveats about how we are embedded in a larger reality than just ourselves; this is no solipsist text and so there is a useful nuance about responsible and 'realistic' desire in this respect. I still felt that the really hard issue about people in regions of starvation didn't get a helping hand from the reflection, though I thought that what was said was potentially amenable to some kind of parallel reflection to that which I give in a chapter in Praying the Pattern where I note that a lot of prosperity gospellers don't really take account of the faithfulness of those in famine areas who pray for food and don't get it and they forget that the planet is only so big and that consumption at USAmerican levels would require about five Earths. I get the sense that Ogun could deal with that.

I was interested to note the philosophical way that he deals with the issue of personhood, and while still maintaining an ultimate non-personal reality (I think) he manages to deal with the immanence of the Divine in such a way as to make personhood more 'necessary' than monism usually does, although I suspect it probably still comes down to a necessary human-interface in some way. That said, I would also have to note that in Christian theology, God transcends personhood as well, so it's not a clear-blue-water division.

This is a book I wouldn't have chosen to read were it not for reviewing it: I would have shied away from the New Thought basis. However, I'm happy to have read it and to have had some preconceptions challenged and to have food for thought.

  Rants to Revelations: Unabashedly Honest Reflections on Life, Spirituality, and the Meaning of God