About the Author

Mark Van Steenwyk is cofounder of the Mennonite Worker, a Christian intentional community in Minneapolis. Mark is an editor at JesusRadicals.com and the producer and cohost of the Iconocast podcast. Mark has led retreats, facilitated workshops, presented at conferences and taught several seminary courses. He is currently working on an alternative theological educational project (the Rootworks). With the support of the Central Plains Mennonite Conference, Mark has nurtured and networked with groups around North America that are exploring the radical implications of Jesus' life and teaching. Fitch coaches a network of church plants in the Christian & Missionary Alliance and he writes, speaks and lectures on issues the local church must face in mission including cultural engagement, leadership and theology. He has also written numerous articles in periodicals such as Christianity Today, The Other Journal, Missiology as well as various academic journals.

Reviews

"Anyone who has ever asked the question 'What if we're doing it wrong?' should read this book. It offers a great opportunity to view a different perspective and broaden the range of possibilities of Christianity in America."--Church Libraries, Winter 2013-2014

"This is not an easy read. Van Steenwyk challenges us to take a hard look at the many ways we are complicit with a profoundly corrupted American Christianity (and he makes it clear he has done and is doing his own work in this). But with humility, humor, and practicality, he offers us a way out--a way of repentance, but also a way of a renewed and authentic anarchistic faith."--Conspire, Fall 2013

"If you are looking for your cultural assumptions of pomp and privilege to remain unquestioned, read a different book. But there are many who will benefit to hear these questions, regardless of whether they agree with them. If the book is read with an open mind, you are sure to come away with a valuable new perspective. Some of us could use one of those."--Kyle Dueck, The Messenger, July 2015

"I strongly endorse this volume as an insightful and practical introduction to the spirituality of repentance, a theology of Christian anarchism, and the practice of liberating Christian ecclesiology. As Van Steenwyk writes in his conclusion, 'The call to repentance is our call to go further up and further into the deep reality of God.' It's hard to argue with that."--R. Dean Hudgens, Englewood Review of Books, Ordinary Time 2013

"Mark Van Steenwyk is a committed voice of a new generation rising to the ancient calling of radical discipleship. Mark's perspectives will seem new and troubling to American Christians, yet they are rediscovering the historic stream of gospel dissent to empire that has always survived at the margins of the church, following the Jesus who forever afflicts the comfortable and comforts the afflicted."--Ched Myers, Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries

"Mark Van Steenwyk is a mystic, seeking to follow the wild and compelling guides of Scripture, Savior and Spirit. He is a sincere brother in the faith, sharing his own important questions. I have been challenged by his questions. Perhaps we all should be challenged by them."--Evan B. Howard, founder and director of Spirituality Shoppe and author of The Brazos Introduction to Christian Spirituality

"Sometimes I look around at the church and think its biggest need is a revolutionary manual, a manual for undoing the myths that enslave us, for revealing the ideologies that blind us, a manual that probes for new points of engagement where we can start living this grand radical life that has been made possible in Christ's victory over the powers. Mark Van Steenwyk's book could just be that manual."--David E. Fitch, from the foreword