It’s time to face the church’s checkered past—and present.

We know that Christians across time have participated in or upheld grave wrongs. We also know that religious wrongdoing is more than just history. Many today have suffered church-related trauma because of others who profess to belief in Christ. So how do we hold the church’s historic and ongoing sins? Is the best alternative to leave the faith? And do these questions make us bad Christians?

As someone who has spent four decades working for one Christian organization and attending the same local church, author Scott A. Bessenecker has faced plenty of disappointment with the church. Yet he has found a richer spirituality by honestly facing the harms done by people who profess to follow Jesus. In Bad Religion, Good News, he offers a pathway for holding understandable disappointments with the church alongside the conviction that God is good. Speaking openly about the sins of the church can help us examine the ways we’ve been wounded—and perhaps wounded others. Healing begins with an honest confrontation of wrongdoing.

This invitational guide will not only help you overcome disappointment with the church but will invite you to embody the prophetic alternative to domination that the church was always meant to be.