John Chuchman

I Love My Church, but Oh My God! John Chuchman

John Chuchman's book "I Love My Church, BUT, OH MY GOD" is about religion, specifically the troubled contemporary religious culture of the Roman Catholic Church, which includes within it elements of deep spirituality and high institutionalism. Formulated in John's characteristic free-line formatting, some selections read as mystical poetry and others as direct confrontation - all contest for institutional and hierarchical reform. In his inclusion of both the political and the mystical, the prosaic and the poetic, John provides a metaphor of the Church itself: often superficial and foolish in the midst of complexity and depth; commonly self-betraying yet self-confronting; always human yet relentlessly pressing its way to God. Barbara M. DeGrand, M. A.