Literary / Arts
Robin Meyers ‘Truth Teller’ – Like His Style
Dale Perkins, Victoria
Volume 30 Issue 10, 11 & 12 | Posted: January 2, 2017
Perhaps rapid aging explains this phenomenon, but I am becoming more and more impressed with some church authors appearing on the stage. The one who has caught my attention is Robin Meyers, an American minister labouring still inside the United Church of Christ denomination in Oklahoma City.
He also has the distinction of being an adjunct professor of Rhetoric from the University of OC (can you believe being a professor of rhetoric? Most of us would go out of our way to even confess to using rhetoric, let alone teaching the art of rhetoric to novitiate church mice taking courses at a university or college).
Perhaps rapid aging explains this phenomenon, but I am becoming more and more impressed with some church authors appearing on the stage. The one who has caught my attention is Robin Meyers, an American minister labouring still inside the United Church of Christ denomination in Oklahoma City.
He also has the distinction of being an adjunct professor of Rhetoric from the University of OC (can you believe being a professor of rhetoric? Most of us would go out of our way to even confess to using rhetoric, let alone teaching the art of rhetoric to novitiate church mice taking courses at a university or college).
However, aside from listening to one of his sermons put on Utube by adoring congregates in the Mayflower United Church of Christ where he ministers, my enthusiasm is mostly from reading his books. He is prolific with seven books written (I have only read three of them). But he writes as an ‘insider’ with over 35 years experience inside his particular brand of ‘mother church’ life and influences. He also is unafraid to name a number of ideosycracies about the way the current institutional Christian church has embodied its faith and presented it to the general public. An outsider might consider him too radical and too much an icon-breaker. I found him refreshingly honest and discerning; unafraid to name the ‘elephant in the room’.
There aren’t enough of his kind around these days. Most clergy (to use his own words) “are sanctimonious trivialities.” He is generally appalled at the way clergy (again to quote his words) “are among the most timid and cloistered of voices in a time of convulsive change.” (page 125, “Spiritual Defiance”). Meyers doesn’t mince his words, and if you are a ‘highlighter’ kind of reader, you will discover the books you’re reading underlined on almost every page.
Of course attempting to synthecize his thinking and perspective is all but impossible. All I need declare is if you desperately are looking for a ‘truth-teller’ who has very definite perspectives on the nature of faith in Jesus of Nazareth, you need go no further than Robin Meyers. If you long for a voice of contemporary Christianity that is penetrating and intelligent, he’s your man.
Dale Perkins, Victoria