Unclean
Ratings1
Average rating4.5
15
Ratings1
Average rating4.5
"I desire mercy, not sacrifice." Echoing Hosea, Jesus defends his embrace of the "unclean" in the Gospel of Matthew, seeming to privilege the prophetic call to justice over the Levitical pursuit of purity. And yet, as missional faith communities are well aware, the tensions and conflicts between holiness and mercy are not so easily resolved. At every turn, it seems that the psychological pull of purity and holiness tempts the church into practices of social exclusion and a Gnostic "flight" from the world into a "too spiritual" spirituality. In an unprecedented fusion of psychological science and theological scholarship, Richard Beck describes the pernicious (and largely unnoticed) effects of the psychology of purity upon the life and mission of the church.
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Summary: Psychologist Richard Beck explores and explains the complicated and fascinating workings of the feeling of disgust and how that feeling can be inappropriately applied in ways that are damaging within the life of the Christian Church.
This is a religiously based work directed toward readers who identify as Christians, but the psychology of disgust can be, I think, interesting to any audience.
