Reid A. Ashbaucher. Christianity 101: A Simpler Way Forward. Achbaucher, 2020.

As suggested by the title, Christianity 101 was ostensibly written for people new to the faith. Different ministries often have booklets or workbooks with titles like Now that You Believe or What’s Next? This book was apparently meant to fill that need for Ashbaucher’s church and ministry.

Christianity 101 begins in a manner similar to those other books. It reviews what the Gospel is and what some basic Christian teachings are. It devotes a chapter to discussing where the Bible came from. Most similar works do not have that; they assume the Bible as a given.

We begin to see that Ashbaucher is writing for a more educated audience. From my experience, which is a lot more with youth and with people on the streets, the question of canonicity is not one they are concerned with. Either Jesus is real or He isn’t; either the Bible is true or it isn’t. If Jesus is real, the Bible is true. But for someone who learned about the Bible from Bible skeptics, this may be very helpful.

There is also a chapter on church organization. This again probably goes into more detail than most such books would. Most just tell the reader to find a Christ-centered, Bible-believing church and let it go at that. Still, more educated or analytic types may have questions when they visit a church: Who are these people? Why are they doing what they are doing?

The author is fair minded. Because he goes into more detail than most such introductory works, he tells upfront that not all churches agree on certain teachings because they interpret the Bible differently. He notes the differences among Reformed, Baptist, Arminian, and Dispensational teachings, for example. While he confesses that the prefers the latter, he treats each one fairly from a historical perspective.

The book ends with a collection of quotations from commentaries on the Book of Romans. True, if one is interested in a systematic presentation of Christian theology found in the Bible, the place to begin is Romans. However, this gets into some arcane pieces of theology that I fear may be over the heads of or simply irrelevant to many readers.

Let me illustrate a similar experience. When I was in graduate school for a degree in English Literature, I took a course on the Bible in American Literature. The professor decided to devote a class to the background of the Bible and proceeded to discuss in detail the so-called Documentary Hypothesis, the idea that the first five or six books of the Bible were assembled with input from three or four diverse groups, usually abbreviated as J, E, D, and P. This was a subject I had read about and had been taught, so I was somewhat familiar with what he was talking about.

To others in the class this was brand new. One said to me, “I don’t get it. How are we supposed to tell which passages are J and which ones are the others?”

I told her, “Don’t worry about it.” To understand the American Literature, she just had to know the Bible stories and a few basic teachings. How the ancient Hebrews compiled the books of Moses was not a big concern.

It seems like Christianity 101 ends with a similar rabbit trail. It does not come across as a “simpler way.” Such a collection of observations may come in handy for someone who wonders about Romans or is challenged by certain doctrines, but for the average believer, it’s a non-issue. to most of them, the Bible is God’s Word regardless of what different writers may think about its authors.

Ultimately, such a chapter illustrates the book’s real intent. After all, the title Christianity 101 suggests a college course. In other words, this book may be written for new believers, but for new believers who have been exposed to various skeptical secular teachings about God and the Bible that are often taught in colleges like that JEDP theory. For them, understanding controversies and challenges to the historical faith may be just what they need.