David Crumm Interviews Marcus Borg on His New Book, "Convictions"
A decade ago, Marcus Borg gave readers his passionate manifesto for renewal, [The Heart of Christianity : Rediscovering a Life of Faith](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060730684/ref=aslitl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0060730684&linkCode=as2&tag=reathespi-20&linkId=I237VPAW4OHQUHC2), which he described as "scholarship, experience and memory" blended across 200 pages. The book spread like wildfire. To this day, when I travel as editor of ReadTheSpirit magazine, if I ask groups of men and women to name a Marcus Borg book they have enjoyed, I most often hear about that little book with the two out-stretched hands on the cover.
Marcus's nine books after Heart of Christianity range from books about Jesus and Paul to the first volume in what will be a series of novels. But, Heart of Christianity holds a special place in the Marcus Borg library. That book's passion allowed readers in communities large and small to recognize in Marcus a friend-a faithful and compassionate companion in their spiritual journeys.
The news today is: Marcus is back with a new book that feels like a follow up to The Heart of Christianity. It's called [Convictions : How I Learned What Matters Most](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0062269976/ref=aslitl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0062269976&linkCode=as2&tag=reathespi-20&linkId=OLSC7DTA64PHEEWK) 
The writing style in Convictions starts with more than 100 short nuggets about various aspects of faith-each with a bold-faced headline. Then, Marcus organizes these nuggets into 11 chapters with thematic titles, such as "God Is Real and a Mystery," "Salvation Is More about This Life than an Afterlife," "Christians Are Called to Peace and Nonviolence," and "To Love God Is to Love Like God."
Convictions conveys an overall message that is both simple and urgently needed: Change is a good and natural part of Christian life. (Just in case you question that assumption, right off the bat, Marcus devotes 2 pages to a speed-of-light tour of the dramatic changes throughout Christian history from Jesus's era to today.)
Marcus reminds us: Change is a normal process in Christianity-but change is more than just history-it's a personal journey. As millions of Americans are aging, he argues, it's time to talk openly across the generations. It's time to talk honestly, he tells us, about how our childhood assumptions concerning faith usually pass through what Marcus calls the "conversions" that are a rich part of becoming an adult-and then can deepen into the "convictions" that form a foundation for a long and meaningful life.
_ ReadTheSpirit Editor David Crumm interviewed Marcus Borg. Here are ... _
HIGHLIGHTS OF OUR INTERVIEW
WITH MARCUS BORG
ABOUT "CONVICTIONS'
DAVID: Change is on our minds. That's true for millions of Americans and people around the world, as well. Recently, we've featured interviews with a number of popular authors writing about dramatic changes in Christianity-Barbara Brown Taylor and Philip Jenkins. In a couple of weeks, we'll publish an interview with Brian McLaren about his upcoming book We Make the Road by Walking, which opens with these words: "You are not finished yet. You are in the making. You have the capacity to learn, mature, think, change and grow."
They're all talking about change. Your book argues that change is a natural part of a healthy Christian life. Why are we hearing so much about change, right now?
MARCUS: All of us-all of the authors you've just mentioned-are at an age, now, that means we've navigated through lives full of change. We grew up in an insular world with a limited view of reality in which we took the conventions around us for granted. I don't know the ages of Barbara and Philip and Brian, but I know that I grew up in a pre-civil-rights-movement era with all kinds of false assumptions about the relationships between Christianity and the church and the world.
This is true for millions of Americans, as well. Perhaps some of your readers can still remember the lyrics of songs on the radio Hit Parade in the early 1950s. I can still sing some of them today (and he begins to sing) ...
Heart of my heart, I love that melody
Heart of my heart, brings back a memory.
And I'm sure some of your readers will remember ...
Mr. Sandman, I'm so alone
Don't have nobody to call my own
Please turn on your magic beam
Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream.
And there was that very popular hiking song, The Happy Wanderer:
I love to go a-wandering,
Along the mountain track,
And as I go, I love to sing,
My knapsack on my back.
Val-deri,Val-dera.
I'll stop right there, but the point I'm making is that many of us, of a certain age, grew up in a world of conventions that were taken for granted by everyone, in a way that we do not experience today.
DAVID: OK, so I've been Googling along with you, as you've been singing these songs. And, I can confirm that in that trio of songs you just recalled, you've just nailed a very precise period of 1953-1954. That's pretty amazing. Those songs were popular in other recordings, at other times, but you were simply able to reach back into your memory and give us the soundtrack to a specific period when you were 11 and 12 years old. That's the "childhood" period you reference in your new book. It's amazing to see how powerfully those early years in our lives stay with us throughout our lives.
MARCUS: That's my point. And I am not alone in this. Growing up, I thought I knew something about the world; I thought I knew what Christianity was all about when I was just a boy. And yet, our country had not yet fully experienced the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War-I could list so many other major changes in the world that we had yet to experience.
DAVID: You write in your book: "I grew up in the world of denominational division ... the great divide was between Catholics and Protestants. In my Lutheran and Protestant context, we were deeply skeptical about whether Catholics were really Christians. When John F. Kennedy ran for president in 1960, a major issue was the fact that he was Catholic. Could a Protestant vote for a Catholic president? The issue was not only political, but local and personal-and eternal. We Lutherans-at least the Lutherans I knew-were quite sure that Catholics couldn't be saved. ... They were wrong; we were right."
You're a bit older than I am, but I can recall that Kennedy era, too. Your point here is that people who claim they want to a version of Christianity that hasn't changed in 2,000 years-well, most of them don't know what they're demanding. As Philip Jenkins has pointed out in a whole series of his books, much of Christian history involved painful conflict and, often, blindness to the world's most needy people. In fact, the history of Christianity _ is change _.
MARCUS: I like the lines you read a moment ago from Brian's new book: "You are not finished yet." This is such an important point. So many of us, as Americans, grew up assuming that our own form of Christianity-what we experienced as Christianity in our family and in our community-was the same, was unchanging and that there really was only _ our _ one form of Christianity. We were right; all others had to be wrong.
When you mention Barbara and Philip and Brian, I think that we've all lived through so many changes that we've moved from our original provincial views of reality and of Christianity to one that is pluralistic. We want to talk and write openly about this journey-because lots of people find themselves on this journey today.
A MODEL FOR EXPLORING
OUR "OWN LIFE JOURNEYS"
DAVID: Online reviews of your book tend to stress two points: One is that this book doesn't really contain big revelations for readers who've followed your writing over the years; the second point is that this book is uniquely inspiring. This book is touching people on a personal level.
MARCUS: I would call it the most consistently personal book I've written. Pretty much every chapter begins with what I absorbed as a child growing up in the church, and then I look at the changes that have occurred in the decades since-and then I write about the convictions that flow from those changes. And, because these "changes" are foundational kinds of transitions, I call them "conversions" in the book.
If we were to describe this in three C's, I go from the Conventions of my childhood through the Conversions of my adulthood to the Convictions I now hold. But this is much more than a personal book, because I'm convinced that there are millions of other people who have experienced these three C's as well. This becomes a very useful triad for anybody above a certain age to use in thinking bout their life and faith as they read.
I haven't done a lot of talks out on the road, just yet, about this new book. But when I travel and talk about this book, I'm going to encourage people to try to get in touch with their childhood memories. What did they absorb and internalize about Christianity when they were around the age of 12 or so? Then, I want to encourage people to think about all of the changes in the world and in our own lives. I want to ask people: What were the circumstances that led you to change?
DAVID: And finally, in this process you're describing in the book, you reach the foundation stones that are described by the title of your book: the Convictions. What does that word mean to you?
MARCUS: I define that as foundational ways of seeing that are not easily shaken. Through this process, I think I am giving people a model for getting in touch with their own life journeys and reaching some of these foundations, these convictions, as I call them.
AN INVITATION TO SHARE THE JOURNEY
DAVID: I really like the way you're posing the invitation-and describing the process-in this book. Here at ReadTheSpirit, I've been working with Dr. Wayne Baker on the rollout of his book, United America, which is based on years of research at the University of Michigan into values that actually unite nearly all Americans. I've been involved in a series of small groups with Wayne and, I can tell you, when people gather to talk about American values-they arrive with all kinds of anxieties. I can remember one participant showing up for a first session withUnited America telling me, "There are going to be fireworks tonight!"
But Wayne surprises people when he presents this material. You and I have just talked about the soundtrack of our lives-our memories of music. Wayne often starts his programs by showing participants famous photographs of America. He's actually put his "Images of America" photo gallery online. He asks participants to remember when they first saw these iconic images and then he invites them to choose a picture that still holds deep meaning. This transforms these gatherings from potential fireworks to communities of people remembering-and talking about the dramatic changes in their lives.
I see your new book inviting readers into a similar process around their religious beliefs.
MARCUS: You've just described the potential of this kind of process very well. This is a journey and I am inviting groups to try a process that follows the three parts in my book: Think about your memories; think about major changes in your life; think about your convictions today. Groups may choose to do all three things in one setting, or they may prefer to begin with the first couple of elements and spend some time talking about their memories and the changes in their lives. They may want to talk about convictions right away, or later in the process. Each group can decide, of course.
The book is very flexible. People could enjoy this book by themselves. Or, they could use this book with a discussion group. Or, they could plan a special program or retreat.
Some readers may find in this book a model for a longer spiritual journey and it is possible to spread out the process of reading and reflecting and discussing over a period of, oh, over an entire year if people choose that route.
DAVID: Let's close this interview by earmarking our next interview. For the benefit of our readers, what will be talking about in our interview next year?
MARCUS: The second novel will come out in the second half of 2015, if all goes well. I hope to have it done in four or five months and then, of course, there's a whole process of publishing the book. So, next time, we'll talk about the second novel.
DAVID: Well, until then ... keep writing.
CARE TO READ MORE FROM MARCUS BORG?
_ ReadTheSpirit has published an almost annual series of interviews with Marcus Borg . Here are some of the subjects we've discussed ..._
- _ 2009 "FIRST PAUL" _ We talked with both Marcus and John Dominic Crossan about the life of St. Paul.
- _ 2010 "PUTTING AWAY CHILDISH THINGS" _ Marcus talked with us about his first novel, which he plans to follow with a sequel in 2015.
- _ 2010 AMERICAN JOURNEY _ReadTheSpirit Editor David Crumm and his son visited with Marcus and his wife in their Pacific-coast home as part of the American Journey series.
- _ 2011 "SPEAKING CHRISTIAN" _ Marcus tackled language that divides-and can potentially unite-Christianity. We talked with him about that challenge.
- _ 2012 "EVOLUTION OF THE WORD" _ For decades, Marcus has taught about the history of the Bible in the early church. In 2012, he produced a New Testament reorganized in the order ancient Christians received these texts.
- _ 2014 MARCUS BORG'S WEBSITE _Currently, Marcus is reorganizing his own website, so some areas will be updated in the second half of this year.
(Originally published at www.ReadTheSpirit.com, an on line magazine covering religion, spirituality, values and interfaith and cross-cultural issues.)
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