Where the Edge Gathers: Building a Community of Radical Inclusion by Yvette A. Flunder Pilgrim Press, May 2005 $23, ISBN 0-829-81638-0

The Reverend Yvette A. Flunder's book drives home the point that marginalized people, including gays and lesbians, cannot be ignored and isolated by the church if we are truly about God's business. Flunder, a United Church of Christ pastor, scholar and theologian, argues well that the church cannot afford to obsess about the moral and ethical rightness of sexual orientation, while ignoring the wrongness of excluding our brothers and sisters.

Where the Edge Gathers warns us of the danger of imposing our personal sensibilities onto others and the powerful negating dynamic that results when we fail to affirm our sisters and brothers in community. Her vivid descriptions of the church in her sermons-particularly fear-based religion--are hard-hitting yet apropos. The scriptural texts, which Flunder thoughtfully explains, carry the reader into a domain that is all too familiar and highlight how Christ's followers and even Christ himself was persecuted.

Perhaps the most poignant lesson relates to Flunder's own struggle within the Pentecostal tradition of her youth. She gives testament to the fact that change can come from within. Some of us have to stay where we are speaking truth boldly and "holding on to Jesus in spite of the church," she says. From the first chapter on how to create community and how theology is oppressive, to the glossary of the vernacular at the end of the book, Where the Edge Gathers captures the soul. Flunder is a true prolific theologian and scholar whose message must be heard.