In this critical assessment of the modern day Church, William Harmening deconstructs many of its longest held beliefs and practices against the backdrop of our contemporary social milieu. He approaches the subject head-on, peeling away the layers of archaic dogma to rediscover the core teachings of Jesus that have been lost through the centuries in the fog of institutionalized religion and ceremonial worship. No area of the modern Church escapes his critique; the clergy, the Bible, the structure and practice of the Church, and even our popular conceptions of the Holy Trinity. He ends with a final chapter in which he offers a model for a new kind of Church; one that is socially relevant, passionately ecumenical, and empowered by the simple message of love and tolerance found in the story of the Cross. Not since the writings of the radical theologians who came to the forefront during the 1960s has such an honest and thought-provoking critique of the contemporary Church been offered.