A Memoir
At 93, a former physicist
and mathematician reflects on a lifetime of religious inquiry and bold experimentation. This deeply personal memoir invites readers into the mind and heart of a teacher who dared to reimagine Christian practice for a changing world.
NOTE: At age 93, Gene Wesley Marshall transitioned peacefully on the morning of August 21st. He was in hospice for about three weeks after a relatively short struggle with lung cancer. Gene worked nearly until the end on his memoir, “The Making of a Religious Radical,” published on iUniverse, just 1 week after he passed.
Table of Contents
Preface
1. My Mother
2. My Father
3. Mathematics
4. Music
5. Religion
6. Sex
7. Marriage and Children
8. The U.S. Army
9. A Religious Order of Families
10. Joseph Wesley Mathews
11. The Religious Houses
12. The Academy for Christian Radicals
13. The Turn to the World
14. Re-marriage
15. Leaving the Order: Ecumenical
16. Realistic Living
17. The Symposium for a Next Christianity
18. The Network of Co-Pastor Circles
19. Readings for Christian Radicals
Coda: On Death
Annexure one: Divine Decision Making
Annexure two: The Four Revolutions
About the Author
Gene Wesley Marshall began his education at Oklahoma State University as a mathematician and physicist. In 1953 he decided to leave a mathematics career and attend seminary at Perkins School of Theology in Dallas, Texas. He has served as a local church pastor, a chaplain in the army, and in 1962 joined a religious order of families (the Order: Ecumenical). For six years he served as dean of the Ecumenical Institute’s eight-week residential “Academy” that trained leadership for religious and social engagements with participants from many parts of the world. He also traveled the United States, Latin America, Europe, India, Hong Kong, and Australia as a teacher and lecturer on religious and social ethics topics. In the early 1960s he was an active participant in the civil rights revolution, serving for two years as the Protestant executive of the National Conference on Religion and Race. In the mid 1980s he was one of the organizers of the bioregional movement.
Beginning in 1984 Gene and Joyce Marshall organized a non-for-profit educational organization, “Realistic Living,” and began co-teaching innovative programs and workshops plus publishing journals, books, and essays. Gene’s Memoir, his 12th book-length project will soon be added to these important volumes: The Thinking Christian, So Be Free, and Approximate Knowing. Joyce and Gene lived 33 years in Bonham, Texas—27 years in a straw-bale house of their design.