Christianity Reimagined: A Mystical Approach for Doubters and the Dubious
Apocryphile Press, 2025
Available through Amazon and Ingram. Also at The Bookstore in Lenox.
Paperback $22.99
Kindle $6.99
More information about the book here.
Most books on Christianity are written by and for believers and those who see the Bible as authoritative—explaining life through Scripture, decoding biblical metaphors, or reinterpreting doctrines. But there is a lesser-known group of people who don’t accept traditional beliefs or doctrines yet attend church regularly and love it!
Robert K.C. Forman, a Great Barrington resident, is one of them. A retired professor of religion, interfaith minister, and hospital chaplain, Forman attends church weekly and is often moved to tears, but he “has never believed a word.” Curious if there were others like him, he began interviewing dozens of similarly inclined individuals from various denominations and countries and found lots of them! He calls them “mystics on the margins.” His discoveries are now shared in his new book “Christianity Reimagined: A Mystical Approach for Doubters and the Dubious.”
As a spiritual director, I have spoken with many, many people. The people whom Dr. Forman interviewed are much the same kind of people to whom I have been talking over the years. These people just aren’t persuaded by the ancient doctrines. His interviewees often made comments like, “I find the image of God on a throne or the ‘Holy Ghost’ as just bizarre,” or, “I just can’t believe in something as weird as the resurrection.” These individuals know that Christianity is not quite a fit, but they stay in the church because it gives them a sense of the holy.
How is it possible to find such value in a tradition you don’t believe? Forman and his informants have been answering this quandary by reimagining Christianity as not based on doctrines or beliefs, but on the kind of vivid moments in which the world feels especially alive and present—experiences we might call “mystical” or “spiritual.” Initially, Forman thought these were rare, but data from Pew Research shows that over 45 percent of people have had such moments of connection with something beyond themselves.
In this reimagined Christianity, divine language comes to be seen as expressive of experiences. “Jesus,” for example, is seen not as a savior in the traditional sense but rather as a man who, as one pastor put it, “knew the immediacy of the sacred in his own experience. He knew the reality of an unbordered relationship with God in his own experience,” and “only after those experiences of the divine began to teach.”
Forman’s book explores how Christian practices like prayer, ritual, and story can remain meaningful without literal belief. It explains how rituals can still stir the soul and how Jesus can be revered without mythic interpretation. Drawing on neuroscience and psychology, it shows how shared spiritual intention and community can foster healing and connection, even without theological agreement.
What brings these mystics on the margins to church is not doctrine but the sense of camaraderie, the openness to something greater, and the inspiration they find in the compassionate, wise figures of Jesus and others. Whether felt during worship or on a walk in the woods, that “something more” is what keeps them returning.
This book is not saying you have to reject Christianity or leave it, but instead, it reimagines Christianity in a way that I think makes good sense. People in the parish are hungry for this: The world needs this kind of reimagining of the Divine. Frankly, I hope every church gets a copy of this book and discusses it together!
Author Robert Forman will launch his book at Berkshire South Regional Community Center in Great Barrington Saturday, June 7, at 11 a.m. Click here for more information.
