Quite some time ago, back when I was still in school, I read a book called Joshua: A Modern Parable. The story was a lightly fictionalized modern-day depiction of the life of Christ, and at the time it blew me away. Fiction can be a powerful medium for moving us to think deeply about God and Scripture.
And so it was, with this older experience in the back of my mind, that I came to Chasing Francis: a story following the fictional evangelical megachurch pastor Chase Falson who, after a crisis of faith and disillusionment with the evangelical church, finds himself on a curious pilgrimage in Italy.
Before I get into the depth and breadth of the book, I would like to make two notes:
First: if you are a literature snob or if you focus overmuch on literary technique and approaches, this book is not for you. It is written for a general readership. It is not trying to be high literature. I found the most unbelievable and hilarious bit to be Chase’s identity as not only an evangelical megachurch pastor, but an evangelical megachurch pastor in New England who is also not married and lives in a condo. So let me just say it. If you have no patience for expository dumps, a little sentimentality, and very simple plots (a late romantic subplot gave me a good bit of the ick), this may not be for you.
The book itself is not bad at all, to be clear—there’s a lot of humor in it, very engaging sections, and it sails as a sort of spiritual travelogue—but others might find it too frustrating. Fortunately, I’m not much of a literature snob myself despite the Ph.D., and so I found myself able to look past some of the flaws of the fiction to focus on the ideas and concepts I found quite meaningful.
Second: this book is, certainly, written for anyone of any denomination (and indeed, the suggestion that no one denomination has a full monopoly on Christian truth and understanding makes itself felt throughout)—but depending on your politics and your evangelical identity this book may make you uncomfortable. It is a critique of the evangelical church—a fairly blunt one—and it is an exploration of what we might do in those moments of disillusionment when the church we’re a part of becomes, over time, something we no longer recognize. If that isn’t your jam, avoid.
With that, to the review proper.
The book’s plot and structure is fairly simple. Chase Falson is a megachurch pastor who finds himself mired in disillusionment. Despite high church attendance and every external sign of success, he’s finding everything that he does to be more and more shallow. Wondering if this is all there is, he finds himself in the midst of a faith crisis that leads to a meltdown in front of his entire congregation. Forced into a sabbatical while the church elders determine what to do with him, he heads off to see his Uncle Kenny, a Franciscan friar, in Italy. Kenny greets him and, aware of his spiritual state, guides him on a pilgrimage to follow in the footsteps of, and to learn about, St. Francis.
This book can, at times, be very funny, particularly in its accurate depiction of the Protestant/evangelical experience. The depiction of the slick youth pastor, Chip—Scripture-shallow, deeply ambitious, and cloaking his nastiness under a bright veneer of Christianese—is a deft satire of evangelicalism gone wrong. The book has fun with Chase’s resistance to—and occasional panic about—practices that feel “too Catholic,” and those moments will evoke a sheepish grin with many Protestant readers raised in a certain denominational milieu. The humor serves as a gentle reminder of how deeply we can wed ourselves, even in our doubt, to the traditions of our denomination.
Moreover, the book portrays gentle, loving Christian relationships. The friars that “adopt” Chase during his pilgrimage live out Christlike love with and for Him. They feed him, joke and laugh with him, sit in silence with him when he breaks down (what one of the friars calls “a wet prayer”). They introduce him to new concepts and ideas, but don’t attempt conversion-by-metaphorical-gunpoint. They simply love. For this reason, perhaps, Italy portion of the book landed as my favorite.
Beyond this, the framing of the text is helpful: after the initial introduction, the book alternates between the fictional account of Chase’s journal entry and his “diary entries,” where Franciscan concepts and ideas can be unpacked with greater depth and more intellectual concepts are explored.
What I appreciated about the book was that it captured with aching poignancy the feeling that I know many have experienced about a certain growing shallowness in the evangelical church, a shift away from Christlikeness to more worldly concerns, to marketing and money, to politics, to performance and presentation rather than intimacy with God and community as a church. Chase is the embodiment of all these struggles: he genuinely loves the evangelical church and yet he yearns for it to grow and mature beyond its current state, longs to see more of God in where He is, longs to bring the change his heart aches to find in Christ. He wants to bring change to a church that does not necessarily want it.
The figure of St. Francis, then, is presented as a potential path forward—not in the sense that an affection for a particular saint will fix the problem, but rather that what Francis represents can provide a road map for the disillusioned. Delving into Francis’ history, the book points out that he lived out a radical faith at a time when many were deeply disillusioned and cynical about a church that appeared deeply hypocritical, deeply worldly, and not at all Christlike. His practices—making the Gospel accessible and understandable to others, introducing people to God through music/art, caring for God’s creation, and on living in radical poverty while living in service to others—provide Chase both with an indictment of what his church is not and a vision for what it can be.
There are beautiful echoes of wonderful writers and thinkers here. Having read Makoto Fujimura (credited later in the acknowledgements), I found the discussions on art and faith deeply resonant. The book reminds us that there are many, many ways to get to know God, and that beautiful art and music can be one of them. The emphasis on environmental care pulls in Wendell Berry. And Chase’s introduction to the liturgical world helps him to understand the beauty of liturgy and Eucharist, of what it means to find oneself in a sacred space—and that this is okay, even for Protestant believers.
These meditations comprise the great strength of the book. As Chase goes through his journey, the reader wonders: exactly what is church where I am, right now, and what might it yet be? What’s the path forward? How do we become Christ in an age where the behavior of the church itself is viewed—sometimes rightly—with skepticism, sorrow, and grief?
To my great relief, the book presents no easy answers. Chase does not convert to Catholicism, but he finds that in many ways he can’t go back home again, either. His return to his megachurch to learn his fate—and to champion his hopes for the future—may not offer the ending some expect. But there is a great deal of hope here, and the book’s study questions guide the reader in thinking through their hopes for the future.
Most touchingly, and what I found most needful, the book makes an effort to resist holier-than-thou lecturing. As a blunt critique of the evangelical church, it nevertheless finds value in that church. It offers believers an image of what it can mean to lovingly want better, and to set out to achieve that in the grace of the Holy Spirit, without feeling superior or trying to dismantle something, without perpetual kvetching, without feeling that you’ve “done it better” or “done it righter” than those who might not be where you are.
I have been somewhat wary of the “exvangelical” movement primarily because it seems so interested in deconstruction, in perpetual critique. Chasing Francis offers what the book identifies as a “post-evangelical” perspective: one more interested in building a future, acknowledging the best of what God has given all of us, than in a critique that can mire us in hopelessness.
Whether or not you’ll like this book depends, entirely, on where you are regarding the Christian church when you read it. For me, having grown weary of much and having settled into a new congregation, Chasing Francis provided me with a reminder of my experience reading Joshua long ago. The fictitious story of a disillusioned pastor served to make me reflect on how I can better “be Christ”—and in doing so, help bring my stone to build the church I want to build.
Samaritan's Song 