THE WARRIOR PRIESTHOOD REVOLUTION

A Christian book offers eclectic takes on religious doctrine, ethics, and history.

A clinical psychologist, Slobodzien has studied Christian history and theology for decades after a spiritual conversion in the 1970s. He has written over a half-dozen works on Christianity and biblical counseling. In this volume, he challenges the stereotype of Jesus “as a meek, mild, peaceful, loving, hippie type of person” and provides an alternate vision of a “divine Warrior who first came to start an anti-religious revolution.” Indeed, in the work’s reading of the book of Revelation, Jesus will return at the battle of Armageddon as the head of an army that includes “the Royal Priesthood of all believers,” or his true disciples. But not all who call themselves “Christian,” the book claims in one of its central arguments, will be included in this apocalyptic roll call. Raised in an Italian/Polish Catholic family, the author has since determined that Roman Catholicism’s dogmas are not only incorrect, but that “Satan is still being worshipped today” in the religion’s “worship” of the dead (“All Hallows Eve”) and its veneration of the Virgin Mary (a cleverly disguised reinterpretation of the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar). Critical of all “organized religion” that bases salvation on codes of conduct and “membership rules,” Slobodzien does not pull any punches regarding Protestant churches either. Entire chapters are devoted to condemning megachurches and high-profile pastors who line their bank accounts via “spiritual financial extortion” and mislead their flocks through promoting Covid-19 conspiracy theories. While following a literalist approach to the Bible similar to evangelicals, the author critiques conservative Christians who use “false religious guilt…to attack God’s People” and presents refreshingly nuanced takes on incendiary culture war issues like abortion and sexuality. And while the book supplies several eccentric theories, such as Satan’s role in mass extinction events in Earth’s history and the conjecture that Neanderthals were the “Nephilim” of biblical lore, Slobodzien’s honest discussions of the “brutal Systemic Racism in our nation” are welcome views from a White Christian author.

An approachable work that delivers reasoned critiques of organized Christianity despite embracing some fringe theories.