Catawba Publishing

Sidney Kelly's A Strange and Wayward Thing started out, he says, as a response to the recurrent question of his daughters, "Daddy, what do you believe?" It has become a brilliant portrayal of the issues and problems of religious belief and practice over the last five decades in North America. The study is grounded in relentless self-criticism of his own life, work, and thought along with immensely illuminating analysis of the progress of his own studies of the Bible, theology, ethics, counseling practice, and feminism. This wide-ranging study is kept in focus and made more luminous by its consistent connection with Kelly's own life and struggles and discernment. As he recounts his own spiritual and intellectual autobiography, from earliest days into retirement, he denounces with a prophet's rigor the shame and dishonesty and folly of much religious teaching and posturing, while quietly letting shine through how the moral demands and psychic illuminations deriving from authentic religion have guided him all the way. This is a book to brood over - and to cherish.