No Fixed Address, faith as a journey: John Bodycomb

 No Fixed Address, faith as a journey: John Bodycomb

This book is as the title says 'a journey'. It is a 'spiritual' journey of John Bodycomb a Uniting Church minister. From his initial childhood to his current understanding of Spirituality now. There are a couple of reasons why I wanted to read this book. Firstly it is a book on Spirituality by an Australian author. This is rare, if you go into any Christian book store you would be going to get one. The other is that in some way some his religious journey is similar to my own.
The book is divided into five sections

1. Born to dissent
2. The falling edifice
3. The new age of discovery
4. God, humanity and Cosmos
5. The new mystics

I couldn't help thinking that the book was trying to encourage the reader to understand and even join Bodycomb on how he sees Christian Spirituality. For me it was coming from a 'modernist' perspective. Most of the arguments sit easily with the ideas of been measured in a scientific sense. For me I'm ok with the rationalistic but I also am open to God at very rare times intervening and the implications of this.
There was a few annoying aspects in the book. The spelling of G-O-D usually to make a point. For me it was just annoying than making any point. This sort personal jargon he used a bit, I didn't find it that helpful.
In the end I can't help but feel a bit sorry for John Bodycomb, been part of a the Church system, the Uniting Church which when he started was at a reasonable number now in decline. There are a number of thoughts given by Bodycomb for the decline and he genuinely believes his understanding of Christian Spirituality is an answer to 'post-modernism' in Australia. But I'm not so sure. It as if he has new wine with the expectation it will fit into old wine skins.
Overall I thought this was a worthwhile read. I enjoyed his journey while not always coming to the same conclusions. I suspect if Bodycomb had been born 10 years later he would have been an atheist to agnostic.
If I was to try and 'box' John Bodycomb in it would be close to Jack Spong and to the right of him would be Marcus Borg.